Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Braces

Curves? A quick poll. What methods are shops using to cut curved braces? Tim

Am I about to be embarrassed?
Some simple and quick method for producing flawless curves?

I KNEW I should have kept my mouth shut!

Good genes is a good start.

Jon, any pics? We all like pics here. If you've cut that many braces, then it certainly qualifies you as having enough experience to comment on it. Thanks.

We use the same bandsaw pictured above for the knee brace curves. Draw the line with a template, and freehand it on the bandsaw. Cleanup with a curved-base planer (the "power adze") followed by belt sander. Check the next issue of scantlings for a trick on laying out a fair curve like that on a knee brace. CB.

Did you not mean "Good Jeans"?

This is the way we've ended cutting curved knee braces. These end up being 3'4" long.
http://woodsshop.com/PROJECTS/Mill/Construction%20Mill/CutKneeBraces.htm

Used to cut them freehand, and then tried using a template and flush trim bits but that's alot of extra work with all the belt sanding you need to do.

Cut them with a trammel arm and they're practically ready to go. We just lightly sand the bandsaw marks to retain the texture.

I never use tenons, but you could pre-cut them like we do the 45* cuts at each end.(pic #3)

We (two guys) did these 8 braces recently, including the sanding and drilling in under 7 hours.

You know, I THOUGHT about setting up a trammel arm for my bandsaw. But I was worried that the blade on my little 14" Grizzly wouldn't track straight.

I'm really impressed with how clean those curves are in your pictures. If I had any faith that my bandsaw would do that well, I would have tried it.

But hey, my way worked. Plus, I justified buying a spindle shaper in the process! If I had to cut those braces again (Heaven forbid!), I'm sure I could do it in 2/3 to 3/4 of the time. Always a lot of time involved in figuring out something for the first time.

I'll snap some photos the next time I'm out at the shop.

Heck Jon, my 14" is an old Taiwanese knockoff, but I do have a nice Timberwolf blade on it.

an adze is a really fast way to get a nice curve on a brace. that's the shape an adze cuts best (even on the flat it's cutting curves) and the adze handle makes a nice template.