How to achieve the "relief-planed" effect

[makolodz]

All,

I found these pictures of bedroom furniture by Hülsta, where some fronts are said to be "relief-planed" to achieve a nice 3D structure. I was wondering how to achieve this effect - what tool one should use for that? Is it possible to do it using some hand tools?

Here's a picture where it's best visible:

Thanks,

Matt

[duckkisser]

thats prity cool looking it might be hand caved and sanded or the planer/hand plane could have a special blade in it.

[jhl.verona]

There was an interesting textured box on Lumberjocks projects recently. I was personally more interested in the lid, but I think the sides have a similar effect to your photograph. The author has blogged about the technique he used - a melamine blade in a table saw. I'd imagine you could use a router with a V bit too - still requires a lot of patience though, as well as a jig.

A shoulder plane tilted at 45° will cut a V groove too, though even more patience will be required, and a guide - and some muscle power.

HTH

John

[Torch02]

My first thought would be a *REALLY* coarse toothing plane!

Actually, with the size of those grooves, you could probably file a card scraper with a triangular file to make a really wide scratch stock. If the "teeth" went all the way to each edge, you could overlap one groove as you scraped along the width of the board.

That is a really interesting effect. I might try to make a tool to do this just for the heck of it!

[PaulMarcel]

Are the grooves V-grooves or are these a series of small beads? Love the effect; works especially well with the rhino. Every bedroom needs a rhino. Or a small donkey

[duckkisser]

a christmass donkey?

[Vic]

This look was huge on case work this year at the furniture store I visit when I'm in Germany. I'm guessing a toothing plane, too.

[dwacker]

Just looks like straight lines in possibly random widths to my eyes. Quick and easy on a moulder.

Don

[Onboard]

Here are two close-ups of relief-planed surfaces from the huelsta.com site for Beech and Oak. Looks like the depth varies (most notable in the Beech). Maybe CNC? Possibly multiple routers? Make a pass and then shift the board to make the next pass with an adjustment in depth? Purely guesses on my part. Maybe a custom molding profile for something like a Woodmaster molder/planer. Again, just guessing. Huelsta has a video here. It shows a close up of the "relief paneled front" in approximately the first 10 to 20 seconds of the video.

The picture on the right is Beech and to the left is Oak.

[Mark Reuten]

I would file some random sized half rounds into a paint scraper and run it against a fence. Shift fence. Repeat.

[Mark Reuten]

Also, I love Christmas Donkey but they are so tough you really need to start cooking them at Thanksgiving.

[atomicmike]

It's not quite the same effect, but the rustic planer head for Festool's HL 850 planer achieves a similar result: http://www.festoolusa.com/products/planers/heads/rustic-fine-planer-head-gallery-484521.html

- Mike

[CessnaPilotBarry]

I've done random texturing with 24 grit paper in my Performax. The pattern was no where near as straight as the OP's pictures, but it went over well and was easy and repeatable.

The same folks who grind shaper knives may be able to make a custom set of planer knives. They wouldn't be cheap, and you'd have to ensure they aligned when installed.

[Darnell Hagen]

For a job that size I'd look into a molding head for the table saw. I think aside from a cnc that's the only way to that in a reasonable amount of time.