Snipes Bills and Beads

First thing first. I will be at The Woodworking Shows event in Springfield, MA this coming Saturday with Chuck Bender of The Acanthus Workshop. He will be there advertising his school and I will be there advertising my class at his school in May. The over/under for instances I hear "I can just do that on my router" is 133. 

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I gave a homework assignment regarding a bead in the center of a board. I was then asked about two beads in the center.

When executing this double beaded profile please remember that a hollow is intended to cut only the circumference of a circle. It is not intended to set into a cut. It will not work for this purpose.

Since these beads are set in I will start with a snipes bill.

I do not have the luxury of being able to use only one snipes bill plane. If I simply turned the work around and come back in the opposite direction I will be going against the grain. Snipes bills come in pairs because there are instances that you want the profile facing different directions. This is the perfect example.

I then knock off the fourth corner with a rabbet plane tipped at an angle, as seen in step #3. A snipes bill will not work for knocking off the extra corner once a quirk is established.

A #4 hollow gives the final shape.

The snipes bills create a 5/8" radius and what you see above is 2/8". Take note that the actual profile a snipes bill plane creates is often not represented in the final profile. Many times the pair of planes is used simply for creating a sharp quirk or setting two profiles next to each other. This is why only a single pair is often needed.