Replies

1. 
   GW52 | Mar 14, 2007 07:13pm | #1

   Velo,

   2 choices, bevel cut 4 pieces of quartersawn white oak 45 degrees on each side and glue up or veneer 2 thin pieces on the non quartersawn sides of the legs.

   Greg

2. 
   MikeHennessy | Mar 14, 2007 07:28pm | #2

   This is a topic that will get you lots of different responses, none of which is the only way to skin this cat. Among the ways to do this are:

   1) Make the leg out of four pieces. The original reason for this was to get quartersawn faces on all four sides -- impossible to do with one-piece construction.
        A) Use mitered joints with/without buscuits, depending on which side of the never-ending "biscuits are cr*p / buscuits are great" debate you fall. My own opinion is that using biscuits (or your alignment method of choice, such as dowels) helps a lot with alignment when clampint/gluing up miter joints.
        B) Use a lock miter joint if you have the patience to learn how to set up and use a LMJ bit.
   (Either way, use perfectly straight stock or your joints will open up and stand out like a sore thumb.)
   You also have the option in this method of filling in the "hole" in the middle with solid stock.

   2) If you can find it, and you are not concerned with the purist "only 100% quarter sawn oak" restriction, just use square stock.

   3) Having become frustrated by the time-consuming, overly-finickey requirements of doing #1 well, and my almost universal inability to locally find square stock big enough for #2, here's what I usually do: Join up layers of stock so that, when measured across the joints, the stack is a bit more than you need on the finished piece, and about 1/4" narrower when measured across the face grain. Then, make yourself some 1/8" veneer and join it across the sides of the blank, bringing the blank to a square section just a bit bigger than finish dimension with face grain on all sides. Then, run the whole deal over a jointer or through a thickness planer, removing stock equally from each opposing side (especially the veneered sides) until it's the final dimension. (Harder to describe than to do.) You end up with a square leg with two sides that are about 1/16" face grain veneer, and two sides that are face grain solid stock. Since the veneer becomes so thin, the joint lines at the face edges are pretty much lost in the grain pattern and efectively disappear.

   Mike Hennessy
   Pittsburgh, PA

3. 
   YesMaam27577 | Mar 14, 2007 10:44pm | #3

   The vast majority of the mission furniture that was produced during the original period, did not have quartersawn faces on all four sides of the legs. Or the arms of the chairs. Or the tops of tables. Or the rungs and slats. Or any other piece.

   They presented the quartersawn faces toward the front/top, with 'normal facegrain' to the sides and bottom.

   And if I were making a piece, that's how I would do it.

    

    

    

   Support our Troops. Bring them home. Now.  And pray that at least some of the buildings in the green zone have flat roofs, with a stairway.

1. 
   Elcoholic | Mar 15, 2007 12:42am | #4

   There is one more option in addition to those mentioned here and that is to use rift-sawn stock for the legs.   They will match on all 4 sides, none of which will show much flake or face grain.  Save the "wow" pieces with the flake for the top which is way more visible anyway.John O'Connell - JKO Handcrafted Woodworking

   The more things change ...

   We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized.  I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

   Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC