Cabinet makers please help….
There must be a name for this style foot???
I planned to make it with a MT joint, as shown in the unassembled SolidWorks drawing, but it looks wrong, plus the side will show end grain.
Any ideas?
Edited 2/6/2006 9:29 pm ET by Willie
Edited 2/6/2006 9:30 pm ET by Willie
Replies
The shape is called an ogee bracket foot. Generally they are mitered. Some also use splines, keys or blind dovetails in the miter. Typically, a band saw, jig saw, coping saw or bow saw is used to cut the bracket shapes. The contour can be shaped with a shaper, router, planes, rasps, etc. If you shape the contour on a long piece, the profile will match better at the miter/corner. I guess you could build it in an unconventional way if you want. The mortise and tenon approach may be more apt to show wood movement. It doesn't show in the drawing but you probably want to keep the tenon flush with the back of the piece so it will be back as far from the corner as possible. The end grain on the mortised piece will be weak enough, which might be another reason to rethink the design.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
The Ogee foot is usually just mitered. It is almost non-structural since often the weight of the chest is born on the glue blocks inside the leg, though that varies considerably depending on regional construction differences. Making the molding first and then cutting the miter is historically accurate at least in some urban pieces.
Steve,
Thanks, that makes good sense.
If I understand correctly, the leg consists of a square block, grain running vertical, with two moldings mitered and horizontal grain, glued to the square block.
Willie
Thats often the case, though it might be better to think of the legs being the horizontal ogees mitered and glued to the molded boards which support the case, and in which glue blocks provide the strength. Jeffrey Greene's American Furniture of the 18th. Century, Taunton Press, has a cut away diagram of this construction.
In some Southern shops, following a London tradition, the glue blocks were stacked blocks with the grain running horizonally, and alternated in direction so that every other block has a long grain to long grain. This avoids the cross grain glue situation that can loosen the glue blocks. There is a good picture of this in Andy Rae's Furniture and Cabinet Construction Taunton Press. Unless constrained by regional practices in the piece you are reproducing this is a superior method to having one vertical glue block. Rae would have the miter cut and assembled before cutting the ogee profile, but since you still retain the inside flat surfaces as reference surfaces for making the miters I would mold the ogee surfaces first, and then miter. This gives a more consistent ogee shap on all the feet. There is evidence from some museum work that this was done in the 18th c.
Another unconventional approach is to glue up a mitered square of straight stock, then do all your molding and shaping on the outside surfaces. Cut them apart at the the last operation and you have 4 matching feet.I used this technique a number of years ago for very small ogee feet on a pair of jewelry boxes. If I had done otherwise, the pieces would have been so small that working on them would have been difficult.
Steve - I don't get it.
If one is using a molding plane (or planes) to make the ogee profile, doesn't one have little choice but stick the molding first? Wouldn't all period pieces indicate as much? Is there any other possibility?
I haven't made an ogee foot piece, but I'd like to this year.
As far as maintaining a consistent profile on the front and side pieces of any given molding, I prefer to stick one long board, then saw it up. This is one reason why I prefer long workbenches.
Adam
I thought that was what I was saying. Wallace Gusler in Furniture of Williamsburg and Eastern Virginia, reports that the feet were formed from long boards planed to shape from end to end to create the ogee. He confirms this from studies of the growth rings of the secondary woods. In VA it was common for the primary wood (including walnut, not just mahogany) to be laminated to SYP to make the total thickness of the ogee foot. Drawer blades and book shelfs also were laminated to save primary wood.
He does note that "rural furniture often has feet that were shaped into ogee curves after attachment to the case and that are easily recognized by their naviete and lack of uniformity."
Andy Rae, in the Tauntonwork cited, would have the ogee made by first cutting the miters and scrolling the profile, and then, after gluing up the legs, using a band saw to shape the ogee faces. Molding planes are eliminated and the exercise becomes one of sawing very carefully to a line. It can be done this way if you have sufficient resaw capacity and enjoy that time avoiding the "oops" and the time spent sanding out the saw marks.
Thanks Steve,"He does note that "rural furniture often has feet that were shaped into ogee curves after attachment to the case and that are easily recognized by their naviete and lack of uniformity.""This is the part that threw me. I'm not sure this is possible/practical- especially for the rural craftsman, who very well could have skipped this foot in favor of any number of perfectly stylish feet.Adam
I'm not clear about that either, perhaps it was simply carved, with it being glue on the carcass in lieu of a clamping arrangement. I can't imagine that if the rural craftsmen owned hollows and rounds that they wouldn't be used to pre-shape the molding. Alternatively, it might have been a customer inspired afterthought or modification to get the more fashionable ogee from a plain bracket foot. But all this is sheer speculation. The answer is I don't know. Such pieces don't often get published in the museum collection books I don't think.
If you Google Bracket Feet you will find a Woodsmith article that gives step by step instructions on how to make these.
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