making table legs out of 2 pieces of 5/4 stock

[John S. Genzer]

OK. Woodsmith had an episode #210 season 2 where ther made a table leg out of glued up stock because sometimes you can't get thick enough stock to make a decent sized 2 1/2" or slightly larger leg. They then took the glued up stock consisting of 2 pieces maybe 5/4 each then made 4 cuts on the table saw with the blade at 45 degrees so that the glued seam was at the corner of the leg and there was no glue seam visiable. I can not see the video on woodsmiths site nor is woodsmith carried on my PBS TV station.

How do I set up my table saw to cut the glued stock to get 4 45 degree cuts to make a square table leg SAFELY?

Do I make a jig to prop up the cut edge then pass it through the saw to cut another edge, and so on, untill I get all 4 sides cut at 45 degrees? If so, what does the jig look like? Or am I just missing the how to do this part because I am a nubie and have never tried this yet. So far, I have either settled for a small sized, 1 3/4" or smaller, solid leg or made a glued up 2 piece leg where the glued edge is visable on two side edges and lived with it.
Thanks,
John

[Paul Symchych]

I've glued up stock for legs a number of times. Not with glue lines at the corners though.
If the wood is dark and you take some care to be aware of trying to match grain the seam is not visible enough to worry about.
I recently did a maple table with glued up legs. The glue line looked reasonably good but just to dress it up I ripped a cut right on the glue line, about 1/2" deep and inlaid a strip of walnut. That roughly 1/4 inch 'racing stripe' added a little something to an otherwise plain looking leg. I did it on the 2 sides with the glue line but could just as easily done it on all 4 faces.

[Brian Tymchak]

John,

I don't have a table saw at hand so I'm just visualizing this in my mind, so I can't swear this is a foolproof solution but I think this will work and keep your hands safely out of the way. I also am assuming you have a jointer to square the glue up and that you glued up 2 pieces of stock face to face.

I think you can do this with making only 1 45* cut and then 3 90* cuts, no jig required. First square 1 corner of the glue up on the jointer. Then, set the saw blade at 45*, orient the glue line up/down with that square corner against the fence and knock off the lower corner on the opposite side (blade is tilted away from the fence). The fence for this cut would have to be set so that the inside of the blade cuts just to the glue line (on the bottom). In fact I would leave about 1/16" of material at the glue line to leave room for a pass or 2 on the jointer to clean up the cuts. After that 45* cut, reset the blade to 90*, flip the stock over on to that new fresh face, and make a cut to knock of the next corner, again setting the fence set so the blade cuts at the glue line - 1/16". Flip the stock end for end, reset the fence, and knock of that 3rd corner. Then rotate the stock over, reset the fence and knock of the 4th corner. Set the jointer for a 1/32" pass, and run each face over the jointer twice. I think this will give you a pretty nice finish.

The one possible sticky point of this process is with cuts 2 and 3, since you will have an edge up for those cuts, iow, no flat spot on top for a traditional push stick to ride. I think I would customize a push stick to better control the stock, maybe a V cut in the push stick to ride on that top edge and a heel to catch the back of the stock. The V cut should give you some lateral control so that you keep the stock tight to the fence.

Rethinking this a bit, I think I would go ahead and square all 4 corners of the glue up before the first 45* cut, just to assure that you have a straight edge to ride against the fence for cut 2.

Alternatively, you could make a sled that rides along or even on the fence. The sled would have a bottom for the stock to rest on, and a toggle clamp or 2 on top to hold the stock eliminating the custom push stick. then just slide the sled on or along the fence to make your cuts.

[Mike Henderson]

A way to do this is to use four pieces of wood and cut the 45* angles before you glue the legs up. What you're doing is making a long box. If you can get a wide enough board, cut that board down the center and then miter the two edges. That will give you a perfect grain match on the outside corner. Not "real" but it looks good.

Another interesting way to do it is to use veneer. You can get a "perfect" match of the grain flowing around the corner. No, you don't bend the veneer around the corner, you cut the veneer and then glue the matching pieces to the two outside sides. Or put the veneer on one wide piece, then do as described above.

Mike

[If you can't have a hole in the center of the box, you'll have to be more accurate in your cutting so that everything goes together with the wood touching in the center. But most of the time, you can leave a small hole, which makes the fitting easier. You can use ff biscuits to help keep everything aligned during the glueup. You don't need them for strength.]

[Mike Konobeck]

I just built a dining room table. Built the legs at 3.5". Glued faces together and veneered the edge grain with an 1/8" piece from the same stock. When you chamfer the corner I doubt you could see the seam without really getting close. Very happy with how it turned out. If you are going to go the 45 deg route then you can use a lock mitre bit so the faces register. You will have a hollow core to fill and if you are doing any through mortises then that doesn't seem like the best issue to deal with. I bought the lock miter bit and am glad it is still sitting new in the package. LOTS of info out there if you do a search for Stickley / Arts & Crafts style furniture.

[Frank Drew]

Personally, I don't like glued-up legs, but aside from the personal preference, it's certainly arguable that it might be less work to find dimension stock so that you don't have to glue up.

[Kent A Bathurst]

This pdf is a quick-and-dirty sketch of some 3"+ legs for a dining room table I made out of QSWO.

I wanted teh nice ray fleck "show faces" on all four sides. I'm not much on trying to glue together four mitered sides with a hollow in the middle.

The red is the "show material" out of resawn 5/4. The blue is also QSWO, but side cuts, no-grain, whatever.
> Glue up a blank with show faces 2 sides
> Bevel out the blank as shown
> Bevel cut the mating sides
> Glue them in place.

My first run on these - and here's a couple processing details and lessons learned

I over cut the bevels into the blanks, so that there would be no chance of interference at the corners of the mating sides. The blank was sized at 3-1/4", with a finished target of 3" +/-. The pointy edges of the brittle QSWO tend to fracture, so this gave me plenty of wiggle room to get a clean finished leg.

I hogged out the blank with a single rip blade - didn't want to fool with changeover to dado - actually hogged it out leaving 1/8" "fins" between passes [so that the kerf was trapped, and the dust would be collected, rather than flying out with an open-sided cut]. Knocked the fins over with a hammer, yanked them out. Then - I use a router to flatten the bottom of the troughs - with another leg on either side of the target piece to give me a flat surface to support the router.

Then - set a mating beveled face in the trough. Too thick. Cool - light pass through the surface planer. Rinse. Repeat. Then, it fits dead-nuts. Glue it all up.

Next - joint two adjacent edges, to get a clean, basically invisible, glue line down the very corner. Then - to the surface planer to match up the other 2 sides. Of course, I did the jointing on all four legs, then the surface planer on all 4 legs to end up with exact common dimensions on al four legs.

Very happy with the results. I could do it all over again in half the time, now that I don't have as much "stop and scratch my head" time involved.

[Gary Kman]

I like it. I haven't tried it but wouldn't it have all of the same benefits and less work to make the blue core only 2" wide to start with? The top drawing would look like a fat I beam. A 5/8" X 2" or even two of them could be added (but not glued in) to the sandwich as placeholders and simply lifted out instead of all the hogging out. They could be used repeatedly for all 4 legs.

[Trent Shirley]

John, I just watched that episode recently and I believe they were using a left tilt saw.
After the glue up the tilted the saw blade 45 deg and put the piece to the right of the blade against the fence so that the piece would not be trapped between fence and blade. If your table is a right tilt then you would move your fence to the left side of the blade. You set your fence so that you cut from the center of the bottom face to the center of the outside face then rotate the piece 1/4 turn to do the next side, then turn again for the third side. Then you set your blade 90 degree and cut off the remaining wedge shape and you have your new leg piece.
At least that is how I think they did it. I have the video on the DVR at home and could check but I think that is a pretty solid approach for a solid two piece glue up with glue lines in the corners.

I believe in the same episode they show how to leave one side of your stock long so that you can take off a veneer to glue to the other side to keep your grain matched. The episode name was specifically to do with table legs though I do not remember it off hand.