Cutting down chair legs on an existing chair

[Jim Kirkpatrick]

A friend of mine asked me if I could reduce the length of the legs on some bar stools so they would fit under her counter top. It sounded an easy enough task so I said yes I could. I found the attached picture over on the FWW forum but for some reason was denied access to posting. The pictured jig will work great for the first leg. I will obviously need some block shims equal to the cutoff + the kerf of the blade. to support the stool after each subsequent cut is made. Wondering if anyone else has some good tips to make me look like a hero. Thanks.

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[Mike Henderson]

This isn't a jig, but what I do is measure the legs from the seat and cut at the measurement. Then, you may find that one leg is too long (or too short). I then trim. There's a variety of ways to trim. One way is to put the chair on your table saw (or other known flat surface) with the long leg just off. Mark that leg and trim in small increments until the chair doesn't wobble.

The way I do it - assuming the long leg is not a lot long - is that I take my sander with 100 grit sandpaper and sand the long leg, checking often.

Mike

[Jim Kirkpatrick]

This isn't a jig, but what I do is measure the legs from the seat and cut at the measurement. Then, you may find that one leg is too long (or too short). I then trim. There's a variety of ways to trim. One way is to put the chair on your table saw (or other known flat surface) with the long leg just off. Mark that leg and trim in small increments until the chair doesn't wobble.

The way I do it - assuming the long leg is not a lot long - is that I take my sander with 100 grit sandpaper and sand the long leg, checking often.

Mike

Thanks Mike. Sorry, I forgot to mention that the legs are splayed so I can't see how I'd get it in the ballpark without a jig. Once I cut them, I'll try trimming them up using the table saw blade trick shown on FWW website.

[Ryan Mooney]

For the initial cut I just shim the chair to level on a flat surface and then use a block of wood of an appropriate height with a pencil held on top to mark around each leg and then cut on the line with a handsaw. That is effectively what Mikes jig does except he marks around with the saw which is probably more accurate. You could use a flushcut saw or marking awl/knife to mark with just a block of wood as well.

Its important to mark all sides of the leg because of the angles so you have a good line to cut to (people who are GOOD could get away with two sides... I'm not GOOD so I mark all four :D).

If you don't have attached feet/glides on the leg (or even if you do but imho moreso if you don't) slightly belling the bottom prevent the legs from splitting around the edges and makes it somewhat easier to get a "good" contact as you have a smaller contact point. Even if you do have attached feet/glides I'd still bevel the edges a bit.

[Steve Jenkins]

The jig you show will work fine but doesn't need to be so big. To use just cut most of the way through each leg then lay the stool/chair on its side and finish the cuts.

[Jim Kirkpatrick]

To use just cut most of the way through each leg then lay the stool/chair on its side and finish the cuts.

That's brilliant Steve, thanks! I'm gonna try that.

[Jim Matthews]

When I do this, I just put the chair or table on the basement or garage floor (largest flat surface I have available)
and level the chair or table first.

No sense cutting everything to length and rendering it unusable.
That's where the shims come in.

Mark with a Sharpie - so you can see what you're up against.

[Jim Kirkpatrick]

the legs were dead nuts square to begin with so no shims were necessary. I made the simple jig from my first post and cut almost all the way through on all 4 legs:
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THen I laid the stools over and finished the cuts freehand with my dozuki saw:
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This worked great and the legs were all still level with no rocking. If they were rocking I was going to use my table saw to level the high spots. Raise the blade up less than 1/32 and pass the longer legs back and forth across the saw until it's level with the other legs.
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Thanks to all who posted here, especially Steve Jenkins!

[Larry Fox]

The way that I did it when I was asked by my wife to do the same was I screwed the stool down to a piece of plywood by running a screw through the plywood and into each of the legs. I then clamped a piece of plywood to my TS fence to serve as a tall fence raised the blade so that it cut just shy of through each leg and ran it through. The ply attached to the stool runs along the ply attached to the TS fence and this insures that the angle of the splayed legs stays the same. Total elapsed time for the operation was about 10 minutes and it worked perfectly.