Happy Holidays to all NCW's,
Thought I'd show everybody my latest attempt at learning the trade. I read with interest last month the Fine Woodworking article on decorative table legs and thought I'd give the spade foot desk leg a try on the desk I was building for my wife for X-mas. The 1st thing that confused me was the idea of looking at the grain on the end of the leg to get a consistant grain pattern on all 4 faces. They say to make your growth rings run diagonally on the ends but then don't show any pictures. So I experimented on my prototype and here's the result:
As you can see the leg on the right has the growth rings on the diagonal and much to my delight their is consistant grain on all 4 faces. The leg on the left has 2 different grain patterns on 2 different faces. Success!
After figuring this out I built my 1st taper jig :
Then I cut the long tapers and the leg looked like this:
Finally I cut the spade feet by readjusting the taper jig and here's the final result:
After a little cleanup with the hand plane there ready to go-next step is to drill the mortise and tenons for the draw pegs! I posted more pics of the process in my gallery -- Enjoy and thanks for looking --Happy Holidays
:BangHead::BangHead::BangHead: clamps-clamps-why do I never have enough clamps!!
Thought I'd show everybody my latest attempt at learning the trade. I read with interest last month the Fine Woodworking article on decorative table legs and thought I'd give the spade foot desk leg a try on the desk I was building for my wife for X-mas. The 1st thing that confused me was the idea of looking at the grain on the end of the leg to get a consistant grain pattern on all 4 faces. They say to make your growth rings run diagonally on the ends but then don't show any pictures. So I experimented on my prototype and here's the result:
As you can see the leg on the right has the growth rings on the diagonal and much to my delight their is consistant grain on all 4 faces. The leg on the left has 2 different grain patterns on 2 different faces. Success!
After figuring this out I built my 1st taper jig :
Then I cut the long tapers and the leg looked like this:
Finally I cut the spade feet by readjusting the taper jig and here's the final result:
After a little cleanup with the hand plane there ready to go-next step is to drill the mortise and tenons for the draw pegs! I posted more pics of the process in my gallery -- Enjoy and thanks for looking --Happy Holidays
:BangHead::BangHead::BangHead: clamps-clamps-why do I never have enough clamps!!
