Cabin Furniture Corner Process

The following sequence of photos shows our process for making the contemporary rounded corners on the interior furniture of the Liberty 42. We use Tri-cell panels for the cabinet components, which are later laminated over with a finish veneer.

The Tri-cell panels look like 3/4" plywood, as they are skinned on both sides with a ply face, but they are extremely lightweight and stiff. They can be bent into curved shapes by cutting saw kerfs on the compression side, or inner face. Below is a form we use for laminating the corner components. Note the flat piece in the center of the photo, with the series of saw kerfs down the middle of the inner face. After the corner parts are cured and removed from the forms, a 1 1/4" by 9/16" spline made of juniper is glued into the edges where the part will join the main panels of the cabinet.

To remove a section of the core in order to let in the joining spline, we have a custom router jig set up. Every adjoining edge will get the same treatment, so with this set-up we can quickly prepare each part.

Here is a view of the process of removing the core from the edge of one of the flat panel components.

Below you can see a partially assembled cabinet with a corner component resting on top. The furniture for the entire interior is drawn out on the cabin sole that we laminated as described in the previous post.

And here is a finished sub-assembly showing two junctures where we've installed the rounded corner parts.