Hi, all,
I decided to share a painful experience that lead to a new (for me) approach to tapering chair legs. Three weeks ago, I removed about 1/4″ from the tip of my left thumb. I was ripping at the end of the day, thinking about other things, and tried to clear an off cut without thinking clearly. BAM! I am very lucky, and have resumed working for the last ten days. Today I was going to taper some chair legs with a custom jig, and my nerves told me to look for another way. My jig just made me nervous. You can see why in the first photo.
I thought of a way to use a newly acquired bandsaw with a custom adjustable fence. I added a secondary fence that is thinner than the base of the tapering jig. I added a recess for the blade, so that I could adjust the clearance from the blade to the tapering jig. I set the clearance to about 1/32″. Then I mounted the leg blank on the jig, pushed the jig against the secondary fence, and cut the first tapered edge. The blank is rotated 90 degrees and the process is repeated for the second cut. I was able to taper 18 legs and hand plane the cut surfaces clean in less than one hour. The best part was that I felt quite secure with this process.
I doubt that my idea is original, but it worked so well that I wanted to share it. Also, my new and hightened sense of personal safety did its job. Hopefully you can profit from my experience.
Best regards, Tom.
Replies
If you ever decide to go back to the TS you may want to use something like this.
View Image
Very nice. That looks both safe and effective.Tom.
Didn't know about the commercial version. Looks nice. I made mine to ride in either miter slot. Tall knob keeps pushing hand out of the way.
There's very few original jigs out there.
http://www.woodhaven.com/ProductDetail.asp?Id=2027
Rick,
You proved what I expected. Not the first time that I have reinvented the wheel. That jig looks pretty good. (and pricy)Thanks, Tom.
http://www.woodhaven.com/ProductDetail.asp?Id=2027
Didn't mean you should buy it. This has been the better design that has been published in the magazines the last few years. Shops have been making it long before that I'm guessing. You can make it with scraps for literally $0, excepth for the guys who buy push sticks. They'll have to buy it.
I think the only real fault of the table saw taper jig was the lack of a clamp for the work piece, and you should still have one on the jig saw version. Not having to use your hands as clamps allows you to position them further out of the way and gives you one less thing to worry about, band saws are by no means that much safer than a table saw.
Almost every accident I have ever had in the shop has been under circumstances such as your's, I was either tired, distracted, or in a rush, and often it was a combination of all three.
John White
Edited 4/29/2008 9:07 am ET by JohnWW
A jig is a device that guides a work piece into tooling, (as opposed to a fixture that guides tooling to the work piece). Part of that is a need to securely hold the piece to do it safely and consistently.
Both your old and new jigs lack any form of a clamp. The table saw one is very unsafe with out the clamps, and while the revised one to work on the band saw is safer, it still needs some clamps.
If you accidently cut even an expensive $40 Destaco clamp, and ruin it and the $100 saw blade, it is still less expensive than slicing off parts of your hand.
Edited 4/29/2008 9:25 am ET by Jigs-n-fixtures
I do mine on the thickness planer.
Harry
Following the path of least resistance makes rivers and men crooked.
How safe is this?
http://popularwoodworking.com/video/?showid=115402
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Safe enough, but slow. Although it works very well if your leg is to have an ankle or bulge at the foot.
With the guard in place and a "shoe" style push block this would be a safe operation. Using small notched push sticks that have to be shifted around as the cut progresses is always a poor technique.John White
Dear Boo,
I've done that a number of times with Brazilian Cherry, in particular. It works well and yields very consistent results.............. but then again, a lot of people think that I am nuts!Best,John
LOL. People think that I'm nuts but they are right.
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