I’ve already discussed laying out the mortises on the legs, but I forgot to discuss the creation of the legs. So, let’s go back in time a bit and see how that was done.
I started with my SketchUp model. I drew the legs in the model using the BezierSpline plugin. If you use SketchUp you need this plugin. It’s awesome.
I printed out the leg profile at full scale, which spanned three pages. I carefully taped the pages together and, to my surprise, had a very nice drawing of the leg. I would normally do this by creating a full scale drawing using ship’s curves, etc, but I was very pleased with this method. Here’s a (blurry) photo of the drawing.
I took this drawing, laid it on a piece of 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood, and transferred the lines to the plywood by poking holes through the lines on the drawing. I then connected the dots with the aforementioned ship’s curves. The template, or pattern, was then cut out and the curves smoothed with a spokeshave and curved sanding blocks. (In retrospect, I should have just glued the drawing to the plywood.)
Next, I created a pattern routing jig. I use a large custom end mill for this type of pattern routing and the jig must be very sturdy to take advantage of the process. This is not the place for double-stick tape.
Here’s a photo of the setup:
There are two jigs necessary for the process, and both faces of each jig are used to get all four edges of each leg. It’s a rather complicated process which, in retrospect, was overly complicated for just four legs. But it gave me four virtually identical legs.
I start the pattern routing process by using the 1/4″ template to trace the profile onto the stock. In this case the material was 12/4 cherry, since the total width of the flared legs is 2 3/4″. When tracing, I’m careful to draw the pattern about 1/16″ oversize on the edges and 1/8″ oversize on the ends. Two opposite faces are then rough cut on the bandsaw.
The two bandsawn faces are shaped first, with the other faces left flat. The template is then used again to draw the profile on one of the shaped faces, and the bandsawing and pattern routing is repeated. This time, however, the leg requires extra support, as shown in the photo above.
Finally, the legs must be cut to length. Since I know they are 1/8″ oversize on each end, I start by cutting 1/8″ off one end. It was easy to start at the top end, since it has two adjacent flat surfaces where the aprons attach. The photo below shows the setup for cutting the bottom end.
Note the spacers taped in place to get the correct configuration. The tape on the end of the leg is there to prevent tearout on the backside of the cut.