
How to round wood edges by hand. The radius of your rounded edge will depend on the radius of the cutter. The best tool recommended in the post is the hand plane. In most cases 80 grit paper is a good starting point for sanding planed or shaped wood. Whether you choose to round wood edges by hand with a chisel andor a card scraper or whether you opt for the beginner friendly hand plane method we listed above we sure hope this tutorial has been of your assistance.
Round over cutters have radiuses of between 634mm and 185mm. Softening the edges of your projects can make them both aesthetically more pleasing and less likely to splinter. You will blow out the wood fibers on the exit side of the board. Start with 100 grit if the wood is already smooth with no deep scratches planer marks or other surface defects.
Keep wood corners safe from injury with help from a professional remodeler in this free video. So in general the simplest and easiest handtool method to round an edge is to first create a 450 chamfer often done with a block plane but in theory nearly any hand plane can be used and then to knock the corners off the chamfer with one or two light passes of the plane in essence creating a triple chamfer. These edges are now ready for sanding or scraping in hardwood. On the other hand if you start with sandpaper thats too fine itll take forever to sand out defects.
However if you decide to round wood edges without a router the most important tool is the hand plane. Wood routers allow you to round off edges of wood to reduce their sharpness. Before you begin. Before the era of automatic routers hand planes are what people use to round the edges of woodworks.
Choose a round over or ovolo cutter with a guide bearing which will work for your application. As you round over the long grain you will plane off all the splinters. If you are rounding over multiple edges always do the end grain first. The whole process takes just minutes.
Chris marshall explains and offers advice on how best to break edges in this video.