Tapered Legs

[Irvin Cooper]

I am in the process of building a kitchen table from walnut. The legs are 29" in height, 3 3/8" square. I would like to taper these on two sides, but cannot find any real standard on angle or percent of taper.

Does anyone have any guidelines regarding a 2-sided taper and what they should wind up at?

Thanks

Irv

[Doug Shepard]

I've always just drawn the cutline on the legs until I found something that looks right. But thinking about what the top thicknesses were and what I ended up with at the bottom, I think I usually end up somewhere around 50% or a skosh more of the top leg thickness. What's going to look right will depend some on the height too. But I'd draw a taper down to 2" at the bottom and see what that looks like.

[Martin Shupe]

Irvin,

I start the taper about one inch below the rail.

Then I make the bottom half the size of the top.

So...

1.5 inch square legs, .75 inch square on the bottom.

I believe I read that was the rule of thumb used by the shakers.

It works good and looks nice.

Try this link for a tapered leg side table using this rule of thumb.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=45436