Sanding, Cutting Bent Laminations

[Scott Bernstein]

I previously built the lamp pictured below, in Oak. I am building another for a second bedroom, this time in Cherry. I had some thin strips of cherry leftover from another project, so I decided to use them for a bent lamination, for the swing arm in the new lamp (below, on top of my A3-41). I have never done a lamination like this and I think it came out pretty well. Now that I have this lamination glued up, it occured to me I'd like to sculpt it a little bit, and maybe taper it towards the end. With a solid piece of wood I would normally use my bandsaw, spindle sander, stationary sander, maybe some files, etc... for that sort of thing. Can do all my normal operations on a bent lamination like this? Anything specific I'll need to worry about? Each layer is about 3/16" thick and I used Titebond II for the glue-up (seems like about half a bottle).

Scott

[Lee Schierer]

The only problem I can foresee is that grain reversals in the lamination might give you some issues, but shaping on a sanding drum should work well.

[Ollie McDottie]

I make bent laminations all the time. And always do a lot of shaping. Once the lamination is dry — it’s basically a sweetly shaped piece of lumber. So you could shape it as you normally would anything.

[Kevin Jenness]

Tapering or sculpting may cut through the gluelines giving an unwanted effect. It is possible to taper the laminates prior to glueup.

[Chris Fournier]

I love this technique! If you re-saw your laminations and carefully keep their orientation and sequence from saw to glue up you can almost avoid detection in the finished component. You have to try to remove as little material as possible for the best results. Powdered plastic resin glue to keep it all together, creep free, super sandable and discrete! Good luck!