my friend recently got a Stretch pumpkin seed. the thing that really intrigued me about it was the lovehandles which I had never see before… excuse my ignorance. anyways, i’m in the process of starting to shape a board and was wondering how you go about shaping lovehandles? and is it a really complex thing or is it quite simple? what has been your experience with them?
here’s my take on it: Tape off the the handles the desired distance from the rails, tape off a second piece to reflect the desired taper of the lovehandles, then go at it with a short piece of dowel (slightly larger in diameter than the widest part of your handles) wrapped in sand paper.
We used to do this alot in the late nineties in so cal it was pretty much myself and Blake case doing them,
We did them this way,
Using a lightweight router I think it was the skil 5280 and a rounded 3/4 inch bit. Before we did the rails{while still square} we would start about 8 inches from the nose and tail and do one pass. That pass was set at 1/2 an inch then about a 2 foot down do a 3/4 inch then toward the middle about 2 foot from the tail. We would then take a rail scrap from about a foot down from the nose about 6 inches in length and blend it all together.This area of the board had a good width and curve that matched up really nice then pull your rails and blend the deck in.
We worked together then and both called them “Grab Rails” this was in the same era as “power rods” if you do it right it ads alot of strength cause you wraped the glass into the groove and you took some of the deck volume out. HOWEVER when hot coating be carefull if they fill your sanding job is really gonna suck
Scribe your line on the blank once it’s nearly ready to be finish sanded. Get it nice and true. Then take a big carrot and shape it so both ends taper nicely. Wrap it in sanding screen and go to work. If your only gonna do one it’s all you need. If you gonna do lots of them grind a tool out of wood.