Chair Rail Carving

The chair rail for our living room/ dining room first section was done and installed a while ago.  Today I spent a couple of hours working on the big section.

  This section of the rail is 7 ft. 4 inches long. Initially I was sanding and putting finishing touches to the relief carving.  After a while I needed to stretch my back and so turned the rail on edge.  I have put a chamfered profile on the top of the rail to make dusting easier.  You can see that I improvised the clamping with hand screw clamps  there are then clamped to the work table and table saw table.  I have four pairs of hand screws in four sizes.  This clamp is a must in a shop in my opinion.

  You can see some of the detail of the relief carving

  and the clamps up close.  I spent about two hours on this today so expect that this will take another 5 or 6 hours to get ready for painting.  It is a bit of a back breaker unfortunately.  I have a detail sander that helps me sand the larger areas but in the end it is job for needle tiles and small sanding blocks. 

 It will look good when it is done.

cheers, ianw