Progress has been a bit slow because I was waiting on a drill to replace my crappy Black & Decker.  I will never buy a B&D product again.  I always get lured by the low prices.  The recent jigsaw of theirs I bought lasted 2 days.  Too bad I threw away the receipt in a fit of faith beforehand.  However, the new Milwaukee Lithium Ion equipped drill is amazing and well thought-out.  

I cut out an initial form, measuring 11 1/8″ deep.  To this I added curved sides of 11 1/4″ radius.  These were cut out with a large circle jig and router.  Once again, Google Sketchup was a great help in finding the exact location of the arc’s center.  

After completing the initial form, I traced it five times onto the remaining 3/4″ baltic birch, rough cut it out with a band saw,  screwed them in turn to the original form and flush routed each one to the original on the router table.

After all 6 forms were complete, I put them all together and sanded until they were exactly the same size and kept watch to make sure everything remained flat and square.  I’ve been overly anal about keeping things square lately ever since my last project turned into a parallelogram containing no 90 degree angles:

Another angle:

After receiving the talked about drill, I put 6, 2.25″ diameter holes in the two center braces, then rouned the holes over to keep the airflow smooth (though mostly just because I like using the roundover bit).

I have some 3/8″ bendable plywood on order, which I’ll use for the initial layer on the laminated sides.  In the meantime, I’ll be fashioning temporary supports to hold the forms in place while I attach the first layer.