I am planning a desk build and would like to incorporate joinery like the attached photo. For the life of me, I cannot figure out a solution other than using dominos, which isn’t an option. Seems like I wouldn’t be able to angle a tenon at 45° on an apron board.
Does anyone know of a project or resource that details how to meet an apron and table leg at a 45?
Any help is appreciated!
Replies
Many years ago I built a small table with canted legs and used dowels to connect the apron to the legs. I drilled the angled holes for the dowels with a simple shop made jig.
I found this video (3x3Custom - Tamar https://youtu.be/PWcACkNqXek) that shows a similar approach to what I did, hope this helps.
One possibility is that the aprons are made and attached to each other first - perhaps via finger joints or a splined mitre joint - then the legs attached to the apron corners with a form of bridle joint. The bridle joint slot in the top of the leg would be a right-angle slot that also had a small degree of slope to make the legs splay out as they seem to do.
It would be difficult to calculate and make standard mortise & tenon joints for that design as the angles would be complex for both the tenons and the mortises. As you mention, it could be done relatively easily with a Domino machine but doing it by hand or another machine-method would be a challenge, to say the least.
Lataxe
Add glue blocks to the inside of the aprons before you cut the miters. This will give you thicker meat for dowels or floating tenons. The domino would perfect if you have one. Alternate the tenon positions rather than trying to have them meet, it will be stronger.
pocket holes?
Mikaol
Thank you! I don’t know why I didn’t think to just use dowels.
@ Lat_Axe certainly seems to be the strongest way, don’t know how clean I could make that cut though.
@_MJ_ terrific advice thank you.
The easiest way to make a right-angle bridle joint with a bit of slope would be to make a right angle bridle joint in a rectangular plank before shaping it to that leg shape. Such a bridle joint could be cut using a straight router bit in a router table along with a 45 degree support to cant the rectangular plank on each side to make two slots meeting at right angles that will together form the bridle. Then shape the legs from the planks.
Multiple passes with the router bit gradually raised, as well as the use of hold-downs and/or feather boards on the router table would be a wise precaution perhaps. But if the depth of the two slots making the right-angle bridle are shallow (as they might well be, depending on how thick that leg is) it might be possible to do it in one pass per slot.
To add the precaution of a belt to the bridle braces, you could also pin the joint with a dowel or two once the bridles were glued over the apron corners.
Lataxe
I would use a sturdy corner brace, screwed or dovetailed in the aprons and bolt the leg flat to the corner brace. This way the legs can be removed for transportation and it is sturdy.
Lataxe ok, thank you for the explanation. I agree this would probably be the stronger choice. However, still not sure if I could pull that off cleanly.
Gulfstar I think I’ll use that brace with dowels, should be plenty strong for a desktop. Thank you.
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