Thread: How to make a Tapered leg without a jig

I'm in the process of making a pair of end tables, and I wanted tapered legs.

Straight inside tapers on two sides.

At the critical moment I bought Popular Woodworking, and an article describes four ways to make tapered legs.

The winner for me was one using a jointer. It requires little markup, and no jig.

My legs are 600 mm long (for the sake of discussion), and I wanted to leave 70mm straight at the top for joints.

I jointed and thicknessed the legs to 40mm square, and cut to length.

I chose to taper to 20mm square at the floor.

First markup. Lines 70mm from the top, on the sides opposite the taper. It's only necessary to mark one leg.

Second markup. Lines halfway from the 70mm line to the bottom - (600-70)/2 = 530/2=265, on the sides opposite the taper.

Off to the jointer with texta (thick marking pen), a square (I think mine's called a carpenter's square, it can sit flush against the jointer's fence) and the wood.

Carefully, with electrons excluded, stand the square against the cutter blade then rotate the blade to your right, slowly, so it gently pushes the square. Where it releases the square is where it starts cutting. Mark a nice big line with the marker. The leading edge of the line is what matters, the rest just makes it easy to see.

Adjust the height of the infeed table so the jointer takes off half, I say, half of the depth of the taper. 10 mm.

Start the machine up, feed the marked-up leg foot first into the jointer. Stop when the first line meets the mark on the fence, keeping the leg right where it is.

Stop the jointer, attach a stop block against the foot of the leg.

At this point the leg looks pretty, um, ugly.

Do the rest of the sides of the legs.

Remove the stop block.

Fire up the machine, and carefully run the legs through, the full length, top first. Be sure to hold it down on the infeed side.

The infeed side, not the outfeed side.

I did a practice run on a piece of pine first.

Of course, one only really needs one line. How hard is that?

My legs will be standing vertical, so fitting it in all respects will be as simple as fitting straight, square legs.

I have not tried tapering four sides, I would take a practice piece, set the jointer to 5mm and see what happens.

Oh, don't forget to adjust the jointer to regular jointing. You don't want the next user spoiling a piece of timber, and then spoiling your crown.