Tapered legs

[Tom Spallone]

When tapering legs evenly on all four sides, is there a better "entry point" of the two choices?

Meaning, when I taper, is it better to start the cut at the end or bottom of the leg or start the cut at the beginning or top of where the taper begins on the leg, which is about 4.5" from the very top of the leg?

[Steve Schoene]

With hand sawing or planing (hand or power) the answer is clearly start at the top and work down so you are cutting "downhill" relative to the grain. That reduces tearout. On a table saw I suspect it matters much less, but it can't hurt to start at the top. Cutting the taper on a bandsaw might be the exception because of the difficulty of making a smooth entry to the wood at the shallow taper angle if cutting from the top.

[Doug Shepard]

I dont know that it's necessarily better but I always do them starting from the top (cutting on a TS). It just seems to make more sense to me as the starting point often needs to precisely meet the bottom of an apron so is more critical than if it's off a few thou at the bottom of the leg. That means the fence adjustments end up being done from a layout line at the top of my taper.

[Quinn McCarthy]

Tom

If you do them on a jointer you would start from the top and work downward or downhill on the grain. Doing it on the jointer is quick and easy. It's my favorite way to to it. When you are done you don't have to remove kerf markes.

Quinn

[Tom Spallone]

Thanks, I kinda thought to start from top to bottom because that line around the square is important to be exact and one can cheat, if needed at the bottom. Thanks.