To dress up the endplate area I used a piece of walnut running perpendicular to the sides and bordered this with some thin purfling strips. This was done using a router and a template jig. The setup is not very fancy but worked well. I may try to widen this cut in the future and also see the benefit of using a tapered plate to make fitting it into the slot easier.
I needed to complete this step while the “top” is still flat. I have cut the “back” side with a taper and then sanded the “back” with a 15’ radius. I plan to radius the “top” to 30’, if I don’t route the endplate before I radius the “top” I won’t have a flat surface and the endplate route will be difficult to keep vertical.
In the background, you can see the routing template
