[gowings]

I am building a project that requires a curve on two finished sides mirrored, The panels are 48 inches high and 18" wide. What the best way to attain this. I am edge banding the edges after with 1/4" solid material. I was hoping to clamp the two sides together to achieve the same radius. So going thru 1.5" of material and no tear out. Jigsaw seems so rough and I don't have a spindle sander to finish it.
Thanks for the reply's
You guys seem to have all the right answers

 

[bzguy]

Mount a router with straight cut bit on a long piece of plywood and screw to workbench or whatever you can jig up at the the point for radius you want.
Clamp or secure the work down to get no movement, plunge in several times instead of hogging it all out for a nice clean cut.

 

[woodnthings]

agreed, router and pin

But if you don't want to route through a double thickness, just make your arc on a large enough piece to make 2 of them the same.
Get one piece done then use it as a pattern to layout the other along the arc. I made a long arc for a headboard using a 9ft long piece of wood with the router on on end and a pivot pin on the other.

 

[gowings]

So what I'm taking from this is. I need to make a template for my router to follow. I do have a few spiral bits.

 

[woodnthings]

that's one way

The other way is to swing an arc with a radius that matches your curve. If it's not a portion of a circle then you need a template, if it's a radius, then you can use a router mounted on one end of a 1/4" thick board and have a pivot pin located on the other that will swing the correct arc. You may need to experiment as to where to put the pin.
It's like using a pencil compass.

Rockler has a circle cutting jig, but it may not be long enough to swing your radius:
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=30473&site=ROCKLER

 

[cabinetman]

No Need To Buy A Jig

If you need to swing arcs with your router, you can very easily make a jig from ¼" plywood. You could make it as long as you want. You could use longer machine screws through the existing router base plate, or just remove the base plate, and attach the jig.

You could just draw one out, jig saw it, smooth the edges, and use it to rout the second one. You can draw the line from the first to the second, and jigsaw it to ¼" from the line. Then just clamp the two, and use your router with a flush trim bit.

.

 

[gowings]

Like a charm fellas. Thanks for the pointers.
Got the curve done with my router and a spiral bit.
Now another thing I would like to do. The back is too heavy and makes the stick rack back tipsy. .Got a brain wave. I am going to screw a piece of heavy 3/8 solid metal bar on the underside at the front and also I was thinking of routering out some of the back 3/4 material. Anyone know a way I could rout out 8-10" letters. STARS is the word I was thinking of taking out.