Pete’s legs
My buddy Pete stopped by the shop the other day and asked if I would make some table legs to match an existing table. Turns out that they had gotten two end tables recently, but only one table’s worth of legs. I didn’t ask the details!
He had one of the original legs to go by but didn’t care if they were EXACTLY the same…just wanted to have something close. The blanks needed to be 2"x2" and 24" long and would be painted, so I grabbed a length of 5/4 poplar and glued up 4 blanks. A quick pass through the thickness sander and a trim to length and they were ready to machine.
I’ve been pretty indexer-centric recently, but the design was pretty easy to cut as profile cuts with a long 1/4" endmill. One set of toolpaths would cut two sides, then the bank could be rotated 90 degrees, re-clamped to the fence, and the other sides cut.
All I needed was a fence to securely and accurately hold the blanks. Since my bit was so long, I cut in a lot of passes.
There was one detail that took a while to figure out. There was a 45 degree shoulder at the top and middle where the legs bolted to the shelves, and that curved at the ends. I thought about making a jig and cutting it on a bandsaw, but realized that a Fluting Toolpath in my VCarve software did exactly that kind of cut. A large 90 deg VBit that cut along the edge made quick work of it.
The final job was to drill for the threaded inserts for the bolts that would fasten the legs. I tried in vain to think of a clever digital way to machine them, but a drill press and a holding jig with a v-grooved slot proved to be by far the best way to do it.
The legs turned out nice, with minimal sanding required. Here’s the table, dry assembled to check for fit before giving the legs to Pete to paint semi-gloss white and final assembly
I’ve put together a quick video on YouTube showing the whole process. It really went quickly, just requiring a flip every once in a while. The hardest part was making sure the clamps were out of the way of the toolpath!
