: After seeing John Skinners 3/16" strips that were cut with 1/4"
: cutters, I am thinking that cutting 1/4" strips with 3/8"
: cutters would produce the same less fragile coves and the glue lines would
: be closer to a plane matched joint than the full cove and bead glue lines.
: There must be a good reason for not using the larger cutters but it is
: eluding me. Any thoughts? What am I missing?
: Reg

If you are going with the idea of using larger-radius rounded-edges on your strips then why even bother with a full bead and cove?

If you have ever seen a drop-leaf table you'll appreciate how the leaf and table are edged with mating, rounded edges. These are carried into a squred-off "shoulder" for the table tops, but the same cutters could be used for giving a rounded, mating, large-diameter profile to the edges of cedar strips.

In the case of the usual bead and cove, the cross-section profile of the edges of the 1/4 inch strips shows they are semicircles. The diameter of these semicircles is 1/4 inch, and the cutter has a radius of 1/8th inch. If you used a cutter with a cutting edge that had twice the diameter (1/2 inch) or a 1/4 inch radius, and aligned your strip so the cutter was NOT centered on the edge of the strip you could finish the edge so that it had a profile of only 1/4 of a circle. You could do this with a roundover bit.

With careful alignment an ogee bit could provide the two matching 1/4's of a circle you would need for each side of the strip.

The downside of using strips with such an assymetric edge is that you have to pick your best side of your strip when you mill it, as you won't be able to flip it over. And these strips are more suitable for simple hull curvatures. such as on a deck, or the hull of a canoe. You can install them so they make a nice bend "in", but they won't do as nice a bend "out". The bit pictured below has a bearing on it, which is not needed for our use. A similar bit without the bearing would be less money, so these are pretty inexpensive cutters. That is, IF you can make the shape work for you.

http://www.apworkshop.com.au/html_econocut/ogee.html

And then again you could forget bead and cove, or any other milled edge, and just use square edged strips. These are fast to fit with a small plane.

Just a thought or three

PGJ