Thread: Table Tapered legs

My favourite method involves plywood and hot melt glue. I like it because it is dead-fast and hassle-free. Here it is.

1. Set the tablesaw fence about 150mm from the blade.
2. Get a piece of scrap plywood or similar, roughly the same length as your table legs, and run it through. Discard the offcut, you will work with the 150mm piece.
3. Do not move the tablesaw fence.
4. With pencil, mark the taper on a leg.
5. Using hot melt glue, attach the plywood to the leg so that the edge of the plywood lies exactly along the pencil mark.
6. Run the plywood (with leg attached) through the tablesaw again. Obviously the sawblade will travel along the edge of the plywood, and therefore along the pencil mark on the leg.
7. Lever off the plywood and give the taper one stroke with a plane to tidy up any saw marks.
8. Use the same piece of plywood for the next taper, in fact just repeat from step 4 till all are done.

There is a safety issue here. Use sufficient hot melt glue to be VERY CONFIDENT that the leg will not come away from the plywood when the sawcut is under way. In reality you dont need to use much glue and I've never had one come off. Also, dont stand directly in line with the sawblade in case of kickback (yes, I know, you wouldnt dream of doing that anyway). In any case, I think it is a much safer method then using a homemade taper jig, or even one of those wretched commercial ones.

As each cut is done the leg should be able to be removed from the plywood with a little leverage. Any glue stain can be removed with acetone or white spirits (sorry, cant remember which). To make sure the glue sticks more to the plywood then to the leg apply the glue first to the plywood, count to three, then press the plywood onto the leg.

rgds
Arron

Hi Jack
I have just came down from the shed, and used the same technique as Arron except I used screws to hold mine to the board the screw holes did not matter on this project it was for a pannel clamp works well regards Col

You can also get a consistant taper on all sides using a jointer. Set the outfeed table higher than the cutter head and the result will be a taper cut.

I made up a box that held 4 legs side by side and packed the rear end of the legs so the legs sat up and then just ran the whole lot through the thicknesser a few times. Every leg comes out uniform. A lot safer and quicker than a saw or jointer.

That's not a bad way echnidna. Don't you need to do two different lots of packing though? Also, how do you work out where the taper will stop, because you rarely want the taper to continue to the very top of the legs?

Could we have a little more detail please?

Its a long while since I've done it so maybe I have forgotten something but heres a starting point.....
I made a chipboard (or mdf) box which fits through the thicknesser.
The top end of the leg goes into the front of the box and enters the thicknesser first.
I think I used a (fixed) spacer at the back of the box. the height of this spacer set the amount of taper as the bottom of the box is parallel to the cut. So its easy to see and measure the amount of taper on the leg before its machined.

I think I locked the legs into the box using wedges ito the side of the box between the box and the legs.

After each pass thru the thicknesser I rotated the legs 90 degrees so 2 sides were done between oeach height adjustment of the thicknesser. when those 2 sides were tapered I put a different spacer in the tail of the box and repeated the process.

I also found that using a box with a thicknesser (and by eliminating the tail end spacer) I could accurately and rapidly joint 6 boards simultaneously. This really sped up the process of making solid timber table tops. I used to be able to completely make a solid timber 6 x 3 table in 6 hours if using square legs and a couple of hours more if i turned them.

Hi,

welcome back, unfortunately I dont have a lot in the way of workshop machinary (ie table saws and jointers etc... sigh!) so I do mine manually. I suppose it doesnt matter to you as you seem to be one of the guys with the machinary but I thought I'd post my method so any other manual types could get an idea - I hope you dont mind. I also recently bought a new plane which I am looking forward to using with this method.

Unfortunatley its a slow method as it involves a fair bit of manual planing. my apologies as I dont know the correct terminology for the various parts or techniques - i'll describe as best as I can... im sure one of the boys will be able to edumacate you (& me...)

What I do is

1) square the timber along the length of timber to the required dimensions (obviously 4 or 3 legs... whatever....).

2) mark the distance down the top of the leg that you dont want to be tapered - this as the bit that will house the dowels or M&T joints (yes thats right I dont own a bisquit joiner either! ) this is the start of the taper.

3) I always sand the botton of the leg nice and smooth so I can see the marks easily in the next step...

4) mark the bottom of the legs with a square (or box) using a mortice gauge from all 4 sides - this will become the planing line guide.

5) before you do step 6 for each side of the leg mark a line down the length of the leg from the top mark to the square on the bottom so you have a planing guide.

6) put the piece in your vice and plane nice and slow with small graduations until you reach the desired taper marks on each of the four sides of each leg. you should have four nicely tapered legs now...

make sure you dont plane against the grain - I always (well, both times) plane from the bottom to the top (as this is the part of the timber that gets more shavings removed) - so my grain always runs from bottom to top to eliminate tear out.

Hopefully this will see you through. I think thats how it used to be done and you can listen to the radio while you do it!

cheers

Thanks for the feedback, different methods to achieve the same result, it seems that the most popular is the table saw with certain variations to "save the fingers".

The most noble method if I could say is Zed's but I am lucky enough that the house renovations went well and SWMBO accepted to release funds to extend my powered toys. I think the decisive point was 3 years ago when we got quoted $9000 for a kitchen and I made a similar one (from a distance ) for $2500 including the purchase of the triton bench. (due for replacement soon) In fact I think she is more proud than me of the kitchen.

I had a go at Echinda's method in the thicknesser with a U frame, I put some side bolts to clamp the work piece and 3 spacers along the distance to give the angle but my thicknesser (China 15") presses so hard that the pressure rollers would bend a piece of 40x75mm pine 2 or 3 mm between the spacers. I will persevere this way as I believe it is the safest quickest and most precise way but I will cut a taper on the table saw instead of using the 3 spacers.

Thanks

Just take very light cuts in the thicknesser and it should work. If you haveto pass it through a few more times thats compensated by the speed through the thicknesser

Originally Posted by echnidna

Just take very light cuts in the thicknesser and it should work. If you haveto pass it through a few more times thats compensated by the speed through the thicknesser

Even if I take very small cuts it still bend the timber if not completely supported underneath. 0.3mm is about the minimum I can take out, else I have marks from the infeed roller on the timber.
I have no snipe whatsoever but I guess it is due to the high pressure of the in and out feed rollers. I wonder if a lighter machine like a portable thicknesser would not be more versatile.

Mine is a 12" carbatec about 11 years old.

I made a simple jig, probably similar to yours, but you need two steps in it to accomodate sides three and four, that is, the ones opposite to those already done.
My legs were 50mm square at the top, Jig was bout 100mm wide, giving me 1500 mm from fence to blade. I then put on a home made holdy downy thingy to stop the leg from getting ideas of leaving home without me. (basically just a bit of wood screwed to jig, which came over the top of the leg, when screwed down tight it held leg down)

If you only have four legs to taper, i.e. unless you are making a number of tables, it is probably quickest to dispense with making a jig. Mark out the legs as Zed describes, and use a bandsaw to cut the taper, cleaning up with a few strokes of a plane.

Rocker

Thanks for the tips, in the end I made 2 jigs and fed the legs trough the thicknesser 1 by one, result is very good.

Attached is a sketch of the jig.

Opps just noticed I put the cutters the wrong way....