Simple Solutions to 'Uneven Legs'

Excerpts from The Message Boards

CCONGER: I always countersink corks (yes... wine bottle corks) into the legs of my furniture.

This has several advantages:

• Corks can EASILY be pared to level out something that has wracked in the final moment. Mostly it is a matter of a few millimeters.
• The corks save my floors, and they protect the furniture.
• The corks are sacrificial... they can be taken out and replaced as required.
• The corks are 'forgiving' and they compress a little to accomodate skew; thus there is often little need to do any more than just a little adjustment.
• I have an excuse to finish that last bottle of vino, as I often only have three corks and a table has four legs.
• The corks need not be inserted (countersunk) full length (they can be cut in half - this saves the wine bill). I mostly set them so that they protrude a few millimeters so that you can not even see them when the furniture (e.g. table) is on the floor.
• Finally, they stay put until the are pulled out.... and that is best done with my favorite woodworking handtool... the corkscrew!

Paul in Bradford Ont: Only one leg needs adjusting. This problem used to drive me nuts until I was shown this simple technique: Stand the piece on your tablesaw with only three legs making contact and the fourth is hanging in mid-air. slide the piece so that the hanging leg approaches the saw's surface. If the leg is lower than the surface and contacts, scribe a line using the saw's top as a straightedge and trim the leg. If the leg clears the surface, try the next until one hits. I use this technique for every table I make without fail.

Bill Tindall: This technique requires a level floor or other flat surface and a block of wood at least as high as the leg error. Let us say the short legs are 1/4" short of reaching the floor. Get a 3/4" thick board or piece or plywood a little larger than the leg is wide.

Place table on a level surface and balance it so that the leg error is evenly divided between the short legs (both short legs are the same distance from reaching the floor). Put some kind of shim under the short legs to keep then in this balanced position. Place the block in turn at each leg. Using the top of the block as a guide mark a pencil line across each leg.

For the legs that reach the floor the mark will be equal to the thickness of the block from the end of the leg, 3/4"for this example. For the legs that don't reach the floor the mark will be less than 3/4" from the end of the leg, say 1/2" in this example. The difference between the marks is how much one needs to cut from the long legs. Mark it and cut with hand saw.

This technique works especially well for a splayed leg, and in fact is the only way I know to reliably mark the cut for the end of a splayed leg.