The Occasional Table. . . part 3

The edge of the tabletop in the original has a nice curve.  I decided to shape this edge by hand, using a spoke shave and then sanding, sanding, and sanding using a concave sanding block.  It could have been done quicker with a router but I have had bad experiences in the past trying to do this; when the rotating cutter comes around to just the wrong grain direction, it catches under the grain and there is a scary jerk and the table edge is missing a chunk.

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I experimented for a long time to try to find some rational setting out geometry for the arcs of the curvy legs.  I felt it was more likely that the original designer had put the compass points at a particular measurement than at some random point.  In the end I gave up and used a thin batten to make a 'fair line' that was close to the tracing off the original.  This was transferred to a pine board with carbon paper and then I cut this out and got it just right with a spokeshave and sandpaper before using this template to trace the four legs onto a walnut board.