If one doesn’t have thick stock for making a table leg or a post, the obvious answer is to glue thinner stock together. There is then a joint running down the leg, hopefully not noticeable but…
I think I remember a FWW article or letter about gluing thinner stock for a leg so that there is no visible joint. I think it involved gluing it on the diagonal. Notice I’m thinking alot, but not remembering much.
Any help with my thinking would be great. Thanks.
Paul
Replies
Hi, GotAll10,
Yes, you can glue up along the diagonal. There are two ways that I can think of to do this: 1) glue up two boards face to face (make sure they are at least as wide as the diagonal of the leg and as thick as half the diagonal) and then cut out your square leg from this glued up blank in such a way that the glue line is along the diagonal. Making sure all the parts are squarely dimensioned prior to gluing will help make sure the glue line stays on the diagonal. 2) If your lumber isn't thick enough for option 1, then you'll have to rip your leg pieces with miters on the long edges and then glue them together.
You are correct, there was an article (or side panel within an article on this in FW sometime ago) perhaps someone else actually knows which issue.
Good Luck,
LIGNEA
This method works great but the one fault is that it takes twice the amount of wood as just gluing up to the final size. To make a leg 1.5" square you have to glue up two pieces to make a square 2.12". Each piece would have to be 1.06" thick x 2.12" wide. A lot of wast if it isn't that important not to see the glue line. With a good jointed surfaces the glue lines should be invisible. I'm looking at a table I made with 1.5" legs made from two pieces of 1" cherry stock glued up and from the same board and I cannot see the glue line at all. I'll bet with a magnifying you cannot see the glue line.
When I've needed to glue up stock for legs, I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with the pieces to get the best grain match possible, then picking the best looking legs for the most noticeable locations.
This usually works pretty well, but once I reversed the grain direction on two pieces of a leg. It looked fine until I did the finish. The reversed grain showed up big time - lol.
Paul,
For years I had mixed results with gluing up stock for legs as you mention. Sometimes the joints stayed tight but not always. So I started making legs of any size needed by mitering 4 pieces 3/4" thick at the corners to get a hollow leg. You can fill the hollow core where there will be joints afterwards. If you have a good table saw it's not as difficult as it seems. And the glue-up is extremely easy - spread the glue on all miters and pull them up tight with tape wrapped around. The end result always looks perfect and stays that way.
DR
When making legs I often take a board that is a bit more than twice as wide as the leg needs to be, rip the board in half lengthwise and then glue the two pieces together making a bookmatched face with the two surfaces created when you ripped the board. I put these bookmatched faces on the most visible sides of the table.
Butt joints only this way, though I do back cut them a little bit for a tight fit. This is partly because I have a short bed pick up, but mostly because every house I have lived in has been so out of square that it just makes the intersection of the joints in inside corners and outside corners easier.
run 3
Glue up a multilayered blank and mill it to 1/4" shy of the finished leg. Add straight-grained 1/8" veneers, "walking them around" so each face has one butt joint. The lines disappear and the legs are solid and stable.
I have made legs of matching grain by glueing mitered boards. These have been for Arts and Crafts pieces where I wanted the same grain pattern on each face. I have edge mitered stocked to 45.4 degrees to get a tight fit on the outside edge and used biscuits to keep the pieces registered while glueing them up. Packing tape can be used to pull the joint tight in between the clamps if necessary. I have had quite a bit of success using this method. Recently I have switched to a locked miter joint on the router table. It takes some time to get the set up correct to cut the miters but once the set up is correct the result is very good. No worries about glue up since the pieces are locked together and it results in a very good mating edge. I take a very light pass on the jointer to make sure the sides are squared up. I have also seen the above veneer method used but have not done it myself. Good luck with your project.
This is a picture clipped from a magazine article of the mitered corners mentioned above. I recently completed a large corner desk with 9 legs made this way. It takes some time but, when you don't have and can't get large straight stock, it works great. As mentioned, you don't need the core except where you will put mortises or hardware.
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