Monday, May 20, 2019

Marking The Legs

Tons of honeydoes have pilled up over the last month or so which means under the watchful eye of MsBubba shop time is somewhat limited. I did get the legs knocked home and wedged with no splits the other night. Next up is cutting the legs to length, with careful saw work the chair should set level without rocking. A lot is invested in the word "should" :-).


The contractor is beavering away repairing the retaining wall. Hard to believe it fell in Jan and it has taken this long to find a contractor.

We may get a freeze tonight. The WX gods are just messing with my head, usually by this time in May we have had several weeks of high 90's, low 100's. Strange wet year.

ken

4 comments:

  1. Question - I am assuming you are using round tenons. Does that mean you need to use a tapered reamer? Or is it used only for tapered tenons?

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    1. Ralph,

      Legs are almost always tapered. Spindles I've done both ways.

      Depends. If using a through mortice I will usually taper with a reamer. A stopped mortise will usually be round.

      Come on in, the water is fine :-) and best I can tell; the only way to figure it out is to build a few chairs or better start with a couple of small tables to help figure out how to get the angles right and not split the top when driving the legs home. Making a chair seat is pretty labor intensive to make learning mistakes on.

      ken

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  2. I am planing on making a few stools first. Most of what I have seen has been round tenons. Chairs I have seen tapered tenons. I have the round tenon making tools and a travisher on the way. I was wondering if I should pony up for a reamer too. And it looks like something to make tapered tenons.

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    Replies
    1. Ralph,

      I expect a tapered tenon could be a slightly stronger joint but I also expect it doesn't make a hill of beans difference.

      BTW, I haven't posted it yet but this last chair will not be finished and is headed for the burn pile. The left front leg's angles are off enough to ruin it visually. I'm still learning and I'm not sure what went wrong. Before glue up I dry fitted the legs and lived with the chair for several days. Whatever, between the dry fit and knocking the legs home with glue and then wedging 'em my angles changed. That's life and my burn pile grows.

      ken

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