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

[glenn bradley]

I do as Brian does. A couple examples.

Targeting straight grain on four sides.

NS-Leg-Example.jpg . ns-proto-to-real-1.jpg

Targeting sapwood as a design element.
Kit-Hut-(18).jpg . Kit-Hut-(36).jpg . Kit-Hut-(227).jpg

[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

Attachment 475738

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.

rail to post test fit.jpg

[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.
pool table leg.JPG

[Brian Runau]

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

Attachment 475738

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.

leg glue up.jpg

[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.

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