Last Sunday I started working on a new project which due to its design and final aesthetics took me out of my comfort zone. Not only I’m using plywood, but I’m also working with a router and a jigsaw. But not for long…
The challenge
I need to install a small sink in our small bathroom that has the shape of a quarter ellipse, which was chosen mostly due space restrictions and because it lends itself to be installed in one of the corners of the bathroom. To save some space we decided to have the sink mounted on a platform that somewhat follows the shape of the sink and will be floating off the floor and attached to the wall.
The idea is to stack ten sheets of plywood on top of each other and having the edge of the plywood work as the front face of the platform which will then be coated with some boiled linseed oil in order to deepen the color of the layers in the plywood and increase the contrast of each layer. This will be a procedure similar to what is done to curly maple and some other species of solid wood – accentuating the color differences in order to increase the visual effect of the material.
Shaping the template
I started by drawing the contour of the sink in full scale on a sheet of plywood and then free-handed the outline of the platform. Some people like to use french curves and all kinds of jigs to draw curves but in this case I went with a trial and error aproach until I found a shape that pleased me.
The next step was to cut the template with a jigsaw and a fine blade. I used 1/4″ thick cheap plywood for the template (not the 3/4″ Baltic birch kind I’m using for the platform) and it cut fast and smooth. I continued with the jigsaw and made some refinements to the curves and finished with my favorite Grobet detail file and some sandpaper. This file is one of my favorite tools to shape wood and one I highly recommend.
The next step was to trace the template’s outline to the birch plywood and cut it as close to the line as possible, leaving somewhere between 1/32″ and 1/16″ of waste which will then be routed to shape.
I continued with my jigsaw but this time things didn’t go as smoothly. This is 3/4″ thick birch plywood with nine layers of solid wood, a bandsaw would be the right tool for this job, but the jigsaw will do, it’s just going to take a lot longer.
In a production oriented shop I would have cut all the sheets of plywood before moving on to the next step, but after the second sheet was cut (and one burned jigsaw blade) I decided to plug in the router to get a feel for what I was into.
I attached the template to the first sheet of birch ply with a few small screws. Some woodworkers like to use double stick tape, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the thought of a router bit spinning at 20.000 RPM and some duct tape keeping things in place. A lot can go wrong in a fraction of a second when things are moving at such high speeds.
With the plywood sandwich securely clamped to my work surface I adjusted the router bit so the bearing would contact the template while the flutes would cut away the excess from the rough cut sheet.
With everything setup I double checked everything and fired the router for the first time in two years.
Again, this was not a pleasant moment, but the procedure went quite well and with some burning here and there I think the result was good and I’m now confident to keep this procedure for the remaining sheets of plywood.
The next step was to remove the template from the birch ply and glue and screw the routed sheet to the other rough cut one I’d cut previously. From here on it’s just a matter of repeating this another 9 times. The rough cut sheet is glued on top of the stack of routed sheets which serves as the template for the next.
See you next week for more plywood sawdust….
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