Ball and Claw Foot on Cabriole leg

[cyclopentadiene]

I have been asked to build a Queen Anne style table that has cabriole legs with ball and claw feet. see drawing in maloof side chair completed thread. There was a recent article in one of the woodworking magazines for which I subscribe that describes how to carve the foot and it appears relatively straight forard. however, I have heard how difficult these are to complete. The standard cabriole leg foot looks simple and even a three toe style foot. Is it really that difficult to make a ball and claw?

I just purchased the 100bf Mahogany managers special at Wall Lumber which the table will require about 35-40 bf.

I am open to any advise on this type shaping. The article uses classic carving tools which I have but find myself lazy and usually resort to the kutzall carving burr. is this too aggressive for this type foot?

 

[striker]

Jeff Greene's Book "American Furniture of the 18th Century" has a step by step approach to carving Ball and claw feet. It also explains the variations in feet based on geographic areas. I believe his website is theballandclaw.com. Its worth a visit just to see his unbelievable work.

 

[Joe Scharle]

I've made 40-50 cabriole legs of the plain toe variety and tried a ball & claw once. I ended up with a mishapened ball and the claws looked like they had rickets! So now you know, I can't even carve a pumpkin. For the legs, I use the bandsaw method; 2 cuts. Followed with spoke shaves and sandpaper. On any 4 legged table, no 2 legs will have the exactly same thickness at the ankle, calf or knee! But it doesn't seem to matter because once the thing is done, they look OK. I remember ruining the very first set by trying to make them all exactly the same.
I do hope you are able to pull the ball & claw out of the stump because done right, they sure look regal...

 

[cyclopentadiene]

Carved a practice foot tonight. I used the article in Popular woodworking #174 February 2009 as a guide. The process was much easier than I thought and for a first try looks reasonable.

Another question for those of you with more experience. How do you sand these to even out the carving marks and get the ball nice and round? This seems too small even for my sonicrafter and I am not sure if it can be done any way except by hand.

 

[ChrisB]

I've done a fair number of ball and claw feet and use some fine straight and curved riffler rasps to shape the ball and then hand sand them smooth. It's time consuming but as Joe said, they really look nice when done well. I've also found that the first one seems to take a long time to complete but the remaining legs/feet go much faster once I have the first one to use as a model.

Chris

 

[Alan in Little Washington]

I always wanted make a set of ball and claw feet, but could never wrap my brain around how to easily and accurately make the round ball. I was thinking you could start with a large ball and carve out between the talons using a depth gauge to establish the size and shape of the captured ball, but then it would be difficult, wouldn't be strong, and wouldn't look right when you tried to attach it to the ankle. Just another one of those time consuming, precision, tasks I'm definitely not known for!