Design and Build Your Own Corbels

Recently I was looking into getting a pair of vintage corbels to use as shelf brackets. I love the architectural detail, the scrollwork, the chippy paint, it was an awesome idea until I saw how expensive they were.

But how hard could a corbel really be to build? They didn’t really look that difficult.
After a bunch of research, it came down to this...All of the corbels had a flat back, a flat top and varying degrees of scrollwork from super simple to elaborate.





It was time to start designing, The top and the back need to be flat but the outside edge and interior can be elaborate as you like…this is where you can express your inner Picasso.
Each corbel comes in 3 pieces; one interior piece cut from a 2 inch piece of wood, and 2 outside pieces cut from a 1 inch piece of wood. If you’re using a 10 inch wide piece of wood for the interior piece then your pattern can be no wider than 9 inches.
For a 12 inch piece of wood, make your pattern no wider than 11 inches. The length of the corbel is up to you. My corbel was about 15 inches in length.





Start with the interior piece. Trace the flat edges, and the outside scroll work onto a 2 inch wide piece of wood (a 2 inch wide piece of wood has been milled down to 1 1/2 inches). For mine, I only needed about 20 inches of wood for 2 corbels. This is a great time to use up scrap wood.





Cut the lines you just made with a table top scroll saw, a band saw or a jigsaw.





Take your same pattern and this time transfer it onto a 1×10 or 1×12 (whatever you used for the first cut). Use the pattern you made for the flat edges and the interior scroll work but instead of tracing around the pattern for the outside scrollwork draw a line 1/4″ away from the pattern.
Once again, cut out your pattern with a jigsaw or scroll saw.





Repeat the last step, but this time you can use the piece you just cut out as the pattern.





This is what it should look like when you put your 3 pieces together.





Before attaching, all the edges are going to need a good sanding.
The three pieces were attached with builders adhesive and a couple of finishing nails to hold everything together.





Fill in any nail holes with wood putty and sand. Paint as desired.
If you would like a tutorial on how mine were finished, lots of design ideas and fantastic possibilities on what you can do with corbels after you've made them make sure you click on the link below.







Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/11066206/design-and-build-your-own-corbels site