I’m planning a walnut coffee table that will have legs that taper on the inside surfaces and then flare out 3/8 inch in the bottom 3 inches. I would like for these portions of the leg to be “booted” in ebony. I can think of 3 ways to do this: attach a block of ebony to the bottom of the leg with a tenon and shape with the leg, shape the leg in the primary wood and relieve the surface of the lower leg to attach ebony veneer, or scribe a horizontal line on the leg and dye the bottom to make an faux-ebonized “boot”.
Garrett Hack talks about two of these methods in the following article for a side table: https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/tables-and-desks/episode-two-ebony-leg-cuffs
In his project the table legs are straight, and veneering the boots/cuffs seems straightforward. I’m worried a little about being able to mill a curved surface accurately enough and more about getting good mating of the curved veneer corners. Using a solid piece of ebony for the foot of the leg would be costly, also creates concern about the strength of the joint, but shaping is straightforward. Faux ebonizing is OK (and how many will look carefully at the lower 3 inches of the leg?) but real wood would be cooler.
I’m hoping others with experience in solving this problem could give me advice. I could swear I’ve seen other tables in past FWW issues that took on this but I looked pretty hard through the online listings without success at finding one, apart from Mr. Hack’s excellent article. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you may have
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I would glue 4 pieces of ebony around the last 3 inches of the table leg , for example if the leg is made of a 2 X 2, I would leave a 1 X 1 tenon on the end and glue 4 half inch thick ebony strips around the tenon.
Thanks for your great answer! I drew this out with my design. The flare extends 3/8 inches beyond the outer corner of the leg, which is straight vertical, but the flare begins at the top of the boot, so the tenon just needs to be located close to that corner. Shaping will remove ebony from the tops of the outer faces and bottoms of the inner faces, but the pieces just need to be sized so that the tenon is not revealed in the shaping. The tenon extending all the way to the bottom should give excellent strength.
Would you miter the corners of the applied pieces of ebony, or will lap joints give a good enough appearance? Also, I'm guessing epoxy is the best glue for this but am open to suggestions from the knowledgeable.
I've done just what Gulfstar recommends on a few tables, using wenge, and it works just fine with a dark wood like that.
Having the inserts mitered would yield good symmetry and with a figured wood would be necessary but if your ebony is uniform black it will no matter much if any. I just laminated this piece of ebony to curly maple to create a child knife and used epoxy mixed with carbon black powder to ensure a sharp contrast.
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Cuts strawberries and bananas but not fingers !
Thanks to Gulfstar and Badger1805 for your comments. I have a plan!
If you don't already have the ebony, guitar finger board blanks might be thick enough for your pieces. They often start out around 1/2" thick, but would need smoothing for good glue joint. They are typically about 3/8"x2.5"x18". I have a bunch of them that were rejected by Gibson Guitar in Nashville in the mid 1980s. Very usable for other projects.
If you haven't worked with ebony before, be prepared for it not to just be dense, but also brittle. It will chip out easily if worked against the grain. Last winter I made a curly maple and ebony vanity. The ebony pieces were glued up and used as 1/4" thick door panels. I had to use a cabinet scraper to smooth them down, as even a finely set bench plane chipped out pieces; no fun if it means taking the whole panel down a lot thinner.
If your ebony is all black, I wouldn't bother with mitering the corners. The use of epoxy with a blackening is very good advice.
Thanks! Nice cabinet! I'll need 1/2 inch thickness or nearly (7/16) to accommodate the curve in the foot of the leg. Looks like it could be $50-75 to buy enough ebony to do 4 legs. Your cabinets must be worth a fortune! I will follow the advice of using blackened epoxy for glue and will bandsaw the rough shape, then use files and scrapers to smooth the ebony surface. Garrett Hack cautions against sanding ebony in this setting because dark sanding swarf may get caught in the grain of the adjacent wood, but this is less of an issue, I would guess, with the combination of walnut and ebony than with ebony and a lighter wood, as he was using in his video. A spindle sander could come in handy smoothing the curves, so I'm tempted to give it a cautious try.
Try sanding a bit before you get to the final shape, to see if the black dust is a problem with the walnut. An air compressor is your friend to help get all the dust out of the walnut pores, tho it won't necessarily get every bit of the finest dust out. But experiment.
Another option is, after sanding the legs, blow out the dust and then sand each wood separately with 320 grit, that won't change the shape significantly. The new sanding dust may conceal any of the fine dust of the other wood still left in the pores. Sam Maloof liked to use ebony plugs in walnut rockers to plug screw holes; I have to believe that he sanded the two woods at the same time.
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