How to achieve perfectly rounded corners... every time
When you are making your own furniture you want perfection... or as close to it as possible. Here is a tip on how to achieve perfectly rounded corners for all your projects.
When you make your own furniture you want people to say, "Where did you buy that?" It's the small details that make all the difference - details like perfectly rounded corners.
One way to ensure that your corners are identical is to make up a template. I have one template that has four different corner profiles. The template is made using a piece of 12mm supawood. I use different circular shapes for different corner profiles and cut these out with a jigsaw. The corner profiles are then sanded until perfectly shaped.
You don't have to use supawood, you can use any type of board for your template.
When cutting projects you can choose the corner profile of choice and use this to mark the corners to be cut.
After marking, use a jigsaw or other saw to cut away the excess wood close to the marked line.
At this point you have the option to use an orbital or random orbit sander to smooth the corners, or use a router to follow the template.
Using a Sander
You CAN round off corners with a sander, but it is important to ensure that the pad of the sanders stays absolutely flat against the wood or board to avoid rounding off. Use the pencil mark as a guide to know how much sanding needs to be done.
Using a Router
Set the depth of the router bit so that the bearing rolls along the edge of the template. If you are using a table-mounted router the bearing should roll along the bottom edge of the template.
