First time here? Did you find what you were looking for?
Long, wide, thick or thin, our Northeastern and exotic hardwoods are sure to please you. Ipe decking, too!

WoodCentral Forums

Knowledge You Can Build On — Est. 1998

Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

Posts

Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#1

Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

At the rate I am making progress the legs could become petrified.


One of the two leg assemblies are show in the picture. They will be joined at right angles at the centers of the stretchers to make the legs and support for the wood top. (the stretchers are mock up poplar at this point)

I don't make many things that are curved. No idea the strategies others use. For me it seems critical to preserve a reference surface as long as possible and orient other surfaces from this surface. After considerable thought I referenced all else from the surfaces pointed to by the arrows in Picture 1. Although off-set from one another these surfaces are parallel and perpendicular to the base/top of the table. By making this surface perpendicular to the table base this joint is orthogonal to the orientation of the table. Hence, the angle on the end of the stretchers is 90 degrees to the length of the stretcher. The result is that the angles on the ends of the stretchers can be cut on the table saw at 90 degrees on the top stretcher and 90 degrees on the bottom stretcher before the arc profile is cut. No fitting of angles on the joints will be required. Yea!

The stretchers will be half lapped at their centers. The best way to make these cuts will be decided today.

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#2

Ellis Walentine

Limitation

Ellis Walentine

Your idea works as long as you're happy with the top and bottom stretchers being the same length, for the sake of simpler joinery. Depending on your design preferences, this might be limiting. Say you wanted to splay the legs a bit, or add an inward recurve on the interior edges of the legs...

Just a thought. I wouldn't categorically limit my design options.

Ellis

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#3

not a limitation

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

As stated in description:

"Although off-set from one another, these surfaces are parallel [to one another]and perpendicular to the base/top of the table".

This off-set splays the legs, actually inward at the top in my case.

The insight to make these joints perpendicular to the base of the table makes fitting the M&T joint trivial. I like trivial. I thought this insight could be useful to others because it is not limited.

The leg was constructed on a drawing board. A base line and vertical line were drawn. All the leg elements were oriented to these orthogonal lines. I diddled with these orientations until I got a result I liked. I could reproduce this result because I knew how it oriented from these lines. This approach not only simplified layout on stock, and joinery, it kept the structure oriented to the floor it will sit on without list.

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#4

Reference surfaces

John in NM

You called that exactly right - always use the joint surface as reference if you possibly can. If you wanted to splay that leg, leave the reference surface as is - ie the same surface at the top and bottom joint, then cut the necessary angle on the stretchers tenon shoulders. Tricky bit is getting the correct stretcher lengths to match the desired angle.

But the point is, only then do you cut the curves. My preferred method with curves is to rough out with the bandsaw, then finish with a rasp & scrapers, maybe a spokeshave - faster but more risky (to me anyway, like anything else its practice that mitigates the risk).

You can do the same with templates and a router table, but it gets to be a harder problem to solve in my opinion. The time you save rasping away is more than eaten up with head scratching over the complexities of routing. I find the router approach to be useful for things I need to make over and over - then the time savings of making templates & jigs really works in your favor. Usually I make them out of aluminum, flush trimming the pattern from an existing part if I can (quicker that way).

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#5

I didn't make a key point clear

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

The legs are splayed inward. Accomplished by having the mortise faces off-set, yet parallel. Easily accomplished by sawing these faces while the lumber was still a rectangle.

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#6

Gotcha...

John in NM

I might also have been reading too quickly :D

Re: Legs for pertrified wood table-engineering

#7

clarification

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

the bottom of the legs splay out and the top in as a result of the upper joint being inside the lower one relative to a line perpendicular to the base. Now there is a complicated sentence!