Thread: compound angle legs

Skirt size?

Approx skirt size? This impacts on how much timber is available to form the joints. Any chance of a basic sketch of intended table layout, i.e leg orientation relative to skirts, how far the leg/skirts are inset from the edge of the top, etc. A simple top view would probably suffice.

I once asked Krenov that, and he quickly found something else to talk about with someone else ... <grins>

What I'd do these days is: start with an oversized piece of timber, nice and rectangular, do the joinery at the
top end, then simply shape the rest of the leg on the bandsaw to achieve the angles you want. That's what
I did on my last furniture project where I had legs sloping outwards (i.e. getting fatter) from the top down
and it worked just fine.

Is this the type of table you are after?
xDining-table-white-top-on-solid-raw-oak-frame-and-tapered-legs.jpg
or this type?
steel shaker tapered table legs.jpg
Generally, the tapering of the legs starts after joining to the aprons. This way you only need to make simple angle cuts.
Joining technique can be as simple as pocket hole screws to mortises and tenons, dowels or biscuits.

Originally Posted by brit

Can someone advise how to fit compound angled table legs to the skirt. The table is a coffee table 1100x600 and the legs are at 10 degrees and approx90x30 at the top tapering to 45x30 at the bottom.The table top is reasonably heavy and i think the legs will need to morticed for strength. thanks brit

Hi Brit

how thick is the table top?

1100 x 600 is relatively small, so depending on the thickness of the top, the legs could be morticed into the top -- a design / construction sometimes called "staked" legs.

the first one illustrated. thanks

skirt sise would be approx 100 mm deep and 25 mm thick. The skirt could be anywhere from 50 to150 mm back from table edge.All the dimensions can be altered slightly. thanks

Brit

Your question does not have a simple answer that any one of us can give you.

The right way to determine the angles and mortice locations for your legs, is to draw the proposed leg and apron arrangement at full (i.e. 1:1) scale. Use a piece of 6 or 9 mm MDF as your canvass.

If you look at the attached PDF, you can see how the plan drawing is used to project intersection points onto the drawing of the front elevation. The projection lines are in colour.
The attached drawing is a plan and front elevation, to which should be added
the side elevation,
a view in line with the leg, and
a 5th view at right angles to the leg.

Once you have all these projections, you can determine how to fit the aprons to each leg -- BTW, I don't think you can fit a 100 x 25 apron into the splayed leg you propose.

(I'm going skiing in the morning so possibly won't look at the diagram again till after my New Year's Eve. (My time zone is 18 hours behind Sydney.)

The splaying of your table legs could be as simple or as complicated as you want.
A few months ago, I made some stools and the legs are 5 degrees from the vertical.
20160925_121957.jpg
And it's only splayed in one dimension. In this instance, the two front apron are cut at 5 degrees from the vertical. If I was to taper the legs, I would have started the tapering after the joint, and the tapering of the leg would give an impression that the legs are more than 5 degrees. The constructions is fairly straight forward and joining the legs to the aprons can be done with the methods that I mentioned above.
20160924_091309.jpg
The legs are connected to the side apron at 90 degrees and the aprons are at 90 degrees from the table top.
There are of course many other ways and you'll have come up with your own design on how the legs are to be positioned.