Joining legs to a curved apron *LINK*

Woops,...wrong forum

Chad Pearson


>Sorry, wrong forum...meant to post in Messages section

Ya know,... when I think about it the project may be easier to do with hand tools. A hand saw would be a lot easier than trying to create a jig for holding the curved tenon on a table saw.

Re: Woops,...wrong forum

Thom D


>If you have a bandsaw, just cut outside the marked line. Then dress to final with a rebate plane or slick. Do shoulders with a handsaw, either strait to the line, or hang back and dress them the same way. I would call that pretty easy if you have a vise to hold the parts in. If you are working with one hand and holding with the other it might not be so good.

Nice thing about sawing the tenon on a bandsaw is that the curvature is not any impedement, either freehand them, or use a single point fence. A bowsaw, etc.. would be fine also. When sawing by hand do a warmup on some similar size scrap to get the hang of it.

Re: Joining legs to a curved apron

Corey Megal


>Chad, I'm interested in why you didn't like the bridle joints? I'm about to make the legs for a demilune table based on that same design. I plan on making a shallow dado in the apron for the leg to fit in to, because I don't want there to be a gap where the apron meets the leg. This couldn't be more timely, I just finished gluing up the apron on Friday.

Thanks,

Corey

Re: Joining legs to a curved apron

Thom D


>I just glanced at the picture and it looked kinda awful. Purely in conventional terms, the set-back is too deep and ugly based on what one expects to see. No reason why it can't be a bridle but then maybe it needs a whole vibe of it's own rather than looking like a bad copy of something else.

Bridle Joints

Chad Pearson


>I thought it was difficult to get bridle joints to fit a curved apron seamlessly. The trouble is that the front of the case is bowed and matching that curve through the bridle joint is difficult. In the DIY episode David Marks just used a hand plane to flatten the surface of the bowed front. I thought that was somewhat fussy and it resulted in some use of putty (the wife can't see it but it bugs me).

I have been making a lot of mortise and tenon furniture lately (using a leigh FMT jig - I know electronic blasphemy,...but I use a shoulder plane to clean up the fit if necessary). I thought I would like to continue using M&T's for my tables and I was looking for a shortcut on how to hold the curved apron while cutting the tenon.

Upon reflection, (said reflection caused from accidently posting on the hand tool forum), I think it would be easier to cut the tenons by hand than by machine. I will still cut the mortises with the FMT jig.

Bridle Joint

Chad Pearson


>Corey,

I reread your post and saw that you will be making a dado to match with the front side of the dado joint. I think this would solve part of the problem I had. On the other hand it seems like cutting the dado would itself present some difficulty in getting the shoulder (of the dado) angles perfect (to match the leg).

With a full size paper templete it might not be so bad.

cp

Re: Bridle Joint

Corey Megal


>Thanks for the reply, Chad. I'll probably give the bridle joints a shot. I plan on just marking the location of the dado from the leg itself and using a handsaw, shoulder plane and chisel to create them. I could do the mortise and tenon's, but I'd like to give this a shot first. If it turns out badly, I'll make the next one with mortises (hell, they may turn out badly, too, we are talking about me and my skills after all).

BTW I'm making the table out of some really cool air dried quarter sawn white oak with some crotch figure in it. I'll post a picture if it turns out ok.

Corey