how would you make some bed legs with 1/4 sawn wood on all four sides

[Brian Runau]

Next project is a mission style bed with square legs 3 or 4" square, not sure yet. I want to make sure I have a 1/4 sawn face on all four sides of the leg. Three ideas on how to go about this.

1. Glue up and mill the legs and add 1/8" or 1/4" veneer to the non 1/4 saw sides.
2. Use 8/4 stock and cut each edge with a 45 degree bevel and glue up.
3. Similar to above, but make a jig and use a lock miter bit to make the four sides for glue up. I've seen this in an article about making a pole lamp.

Appreciate your input.

Brian

[Mark Wooden]

Look up Gustav Stickley furniture

[Kendall Scheier]

If you use rift sawn stock you will have straight grain in all four sides. If you’re using white oak and want the ray fleck on all four sides this won’t be optimum… what wood are you using?

[Rob Luter]

I usually use rift sawn. When I have used QSWO for legs I oriented the ray flake to the show sides. The veneer approach works very well too. The glue line just disappears.

[Charles Taylor]

From Stickley's circa 1915 catalog, they made legs more or less according to your idea #3.

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[Jim Becker]

I'm with Rob about rift as it will be easier to get something that looks refined as you cap two opposing sides. The corners will blend well and if done carefully, the joints will all but disappear. You could, of course, wrap mitered veneer around a core, but that's a whole bunch of work. And, of course, there is the hollow, interlocking method someone noted.

[roger wiegand]

At least in our house bed legs take some abuse, so not a great place for veneer. Stickley solved this problem perfectly, long ago. Just do it the way he did, shown in the diagram above. That approach has well stood the test of time.

[Brian Runau]

If you use rift sawn stock you will have straight grain in all four sides. If you’re using white oak and want the ray fleck on all four sides this won’t be optimum… what wood are you using?


1/4 sawn oak.

[Brian Runau]

From Stickley's circa 1915 catalog, they made legs more or less according to your idea #3.

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thanks charles. Noit sure how I would create that other than lock mitre bit. I will read up on how he did it.

[Kevin Jenness]

thanks charles. Noit sure how I would create that other than lock mitre bit. I will read up on how he did it.

A simple miterfold held together with packing tape will do the trick.

[Jamie Buxton]

A simple miterfold held together with packing tape will do the trick.

Yep, this works. No need to make it any more complicated, like lock miters.

[Brian Holcombe]

Here’s how I do it. The side seams are hidden in the chamfer.

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[Jim Becker]

That's exactly what I was thinking, Brian, albeit in walnut. :)

[Andrew Seemann]

Well, this is how I just did it, on the bed I am currently working on. The bedposts are 2 pieces of quartered white oak laminated to a center piece, with 1/4" quartered white oak laminated to the sides.

I'm doing a Jeff Jewitt style finish, with his water based dye, followed by a coat of SealCoat, then Gel Stain, a coat of SealCoat, and then Armor Seal. I haven't put on the Armor Seal yet in these pictures.

If you look close, you can kind of see the lamination under the dye and stain, but only if you look really close. If you can avoid mixing sapwood and heartwood, it is almost invisible.

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[Billy Stray]

I mitered and glued them on a full legged wine cabinet I built . The only problem I had was where I tapered the leg about 4 1/2 " below the cabinet it showed so I had to veneer the spot
The legs were 0nly 2 1/2 wide by 50" L

[glenn bradley]

I do as Brian does. A couple examples.

Targeting straight grain on four sides.

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Targeting sapwood as a design element.
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[Alex Zeller]

The last bed posts I made were your #2 idea. Just triangles glued together. Legs for a bed are short so it was pretty easy. I didn't mess with a lock miter. With the price of wood being what it is I think I would make 8/4 by resawing QSWO to 1/2" and gluing it to flat sawn WO, maybe select grade. The glue joint being on each corner is basically invisible.

[Carl Beckett]

I did this on a TV cabinet. I used your method #3, a locked miter (mine were tapered legs but that doesnt matter).

Since my material was less than 3/4" thick, I purchased a lock miter bit for the router table (believe it was a yonico bit although not 100% certain the brand, but one of cheaper brands of bit).

Once you dial it in it goes smoothly as long as you have straight stock.

[Brian Runau]

Here’s how I do it. The side seams are hidden in the chamfer

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Brian thanks. Mill lumber, glue up, check flat square again slightly mill if necessary. Thanks Brian

[Christian Hawkshaw]

I use the chamfer technique quite a bit....Here is an example of a post glue up with a chamfer.

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[Rod Sheridan]

I usually use rift sawn. When I have used QSWO for legs I oriented the ray flake to the show sides. The veneer approach works very well too. The glue line just disappears.

Agreed, this method is easy and produces perfect legs.

I’ve also used a lock mitre cutter in the shaper…..Rod

[Jim Becker]

Brian thanks. Mill lumber, glue up, check flat square again slightly mill if necessary. Thanks Brian

Brian R, add to that very careful material selection. I can vouch for Brian H's constructions like he shows in that photo...you have to have extraordinary vision to be able to find the glue-lines and that starts with the material, itself.

[Carl Beckett]

Agreed, this method is easy and produces perfect legs.

I’ve also used a lock mitre cutter in the shaper…..Rod

Which lock miter cutter do you use Rod? It is on my wish list to get a lock miter for the shaper - but - I want one to do relatively thinner stock. Say 1/2 to 1" thick stock. I dont often have super thick stock to work with.

Some of the dedicated LM cutters, besides being expensive, are profiled for thicker material.

I do have a profile pro head and wondered if I could get knives ground for it - but do not think the 45 would give enough support behind it if it stuck out far.

[Ole Anderson]

#3. This was for my pool table build, but I also used the lock bit for my Mission style bed posts with QSWO.
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[Brian Runau]

Here’s how I do it. The side seams are hidden in the chamfer.

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Brian, the edge treatment on the post looks to be a chamfer? thanks brian

[Scott T Smith]

I haven't seen anybody mention the method that I use, so I'll share it.

First off, I prefer a 2 or 3 piece glue up for straight legs. I'll select straight grained (QS or RS) boards for the outer portion of the glue up, and try to find some that have an interesting characteristic along one edge. I will glue them up so that they are approximately 3/8" thicker than the targeted dimension. So for a 2" square leg, I'd use three boards 3/4" thick, or thereabouts, and around 2" wide.

After the glue up, I'll face joint and plane the edges down until the legs are 1-7/8" wide, or slightly under that. They I'll face joint and plane the thickness to 2-3/8".

Next, I go to the bandsaw and slice a 1/8" thick piece of veneer from the two good faces, and then slip fit it around the corner and glue it to the leg blank and cover the glue lines. The veneer has to be flipped over so that the kerf side is out - providing a bookmatch around the corner of the leg. It works very well when you have vertical grain wood with some interesting edge character, because the character is mirrored around the corner.

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[Prashun Patel]

+1 on Rob Luter’s suggestion to find rift sawn stock. It requires more careful stock selection but is so much easier.

Ymmv, but rift is usually better aesthetically on legs than qs: more uniform.

[Ken Platt]

I've done the 4-sided QS thing twice, first on a bed, and then on a night table made to match the bed.

On the bed, I did use a lock miter to mill the pieces, because it was suggested - here on SMC - that it would be difficult to do the glue up with the plain beveled edge without slippage on such a long glue up. I am not sure if that's true, but I will say that doing the lock miter was actually pretty easy. A few test pieces to get the bit aligned, but then it's just routing. And, the glue up went easily and the result looks great. Entirely possible that it was extra work, of course, but I figure it was insurance against a glue-up disaster. Not that I've even had one of those, of course. :D

On the matching night table, I figured that there would be less close up inspection of the legs, so I went with the thick veneer. I mean, on the bed, the posts are right in your face, so I wanted them to be perfect. On a night table, who gets down and really looks at the sides of the legs? So for that it type of project the veneer works ok.

Ken