It is both conspicuous and overlooked. Because people might rest their haunches on it, you have to build it strong. Yet it has to curve. So how do you make something curve and be strong?
Dad?
Well what you’ve got to do is take a big raw chunk of mahogany and re-saw into long, slender planks. Then for about six months you bend these over a jig real slow so they don’t snap.
Once your planks have a deep curve, you layer them all together, with six tail extensions staggered between your plies. Make sure they're all re-sawn and planed to identical thickness (according to your caliper-micrometer) or you'll be sorry.
Then you glue everything together over several days with more clamps and jigs (all told you'll need about 4000 clamps).
And once it's dry and you've shaped and sanded it all down, you place the entire U-shaped arc into a cylinder with a variable and irregular pivot and hope the whole thing fits.
And it did. Perfectly. Cause we’re really good.
