George Vondriska

How to Taper Legs on Four Sides

George Vondriska
Duration:   4  mins

Description

Tapering legs on all four sides is pretty straight forward, if you have the right jig setup. But the real trick is getting the fourth side tapered at the proper angle. George Vondriska reveals a shop trick that will help you to taper legs in no time. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.

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9 Responses to “How to Taper Legs on Four Sides”

  1. Carl G

    I am logged in but still only get the short version

  2. Allen

    This looks like one of the free videos. Has the commercial playing first. But I am logged into my account and the video still stops at the 3 minute mark. Please fix this

  3. Bruce

    Old video from 2016 or brfore. Still has not been fixed to show complete video. Stops at 3 min.

  4. Fraser

    disappointing. if you know the video didn't finish why didn't you fix it?

  5. Jim Gulkin

    All the bugs of your website and slow or interrupted videos and downloads is the main reason that I did not renew my membership, was very frustrating. Hopefully you will improve it( like investing in some better servers and bandwidth) with Titebond to the rescue.

  6. Edgardo

    Logged in as a member, but video ends before George reveals the final info (which is what we all tuned in for!!) . . . where is the remainder of this video?

  7. MICHAEL

    How come this video ends at the 3 min mark even when I am logged in as a member?

  8. skyriter

    Video stops at 3 min mark. Not complete

  9. richard

    this clip ends before video segment has finished

I've got three of the four legs for this project, already done, and going back to the prototype, on that, I had two legs in the back, that were tapered only on two faces, two on the front tapered on four faces, and it was obvious right from the get go, that the four taper, tapering on every side, looked way better. A much more delicate leg, much more gentle look, to this whole thing, so that's what I wanted to go with. Now, if you've done double tapers on legs already, this is going to be pretty familiar to you, just one small change we have to make. I've got my taper jig setup here, so I can lock my material in, cut the taper that I want, on these legs. I'm going to go ahead and cut three sides, when we do side number four, that's where things change a little bit.

Now, a couple of things here, first, notice that, when I did cut number three, this side had already been cut, so, what I did there, was, I pushed the bottom of the leg against the stop down on this end, I held the top part of the leg, where it's still flat to receive the rail later, against the stop on my taper jig. So, you want to make sure that when you make this cut, you're not pushed in like that, you're registering off of the flat up here, where the tiger clamp is. Now, the problem we run into with side number four, is that, when I rotate this into the correct position, to cut that side, lock it in place up here, you can see that there's nobody home underneath there. Now, imagine my big aggressive tooth rip blade, is going to come by, it's going to make this wood bounce like a diving board, and if that starts to happen, it's going to chatter like crazy, it's not a good cut at all. So, the solution is, if only we had something, that was at exactly the same taper, that we could put in here to support this.

Well, we do, it's the offcuts that you've already taken off your piece, from your previous cuts. So, we want a part in here, like this, we're going to slide that uphill, until it's where it needs to be to support the leg. Then, I'm going to mark that position, because now, what I want to do is, take the leg out. I'm going to use some double faced tape, and that's going to hold that wedge in position for me, so that I don't have to worry about it accidentally bouncing out, while I'm making the cut. Now, that automatically gives us the perfect angle.

We're good to go on side number four, so I come down here, I hit my stop, hold the flat against my stop up here, ready to make a cut. So, having that wedge down in here, is a very simple solution to take the chatter out of this thing. So, it's a good cut, it's a safe cut. Next step on these legs, just like always, we've got to clean those up. You can do that with just a little bit of sanding.

Once that's cleaned up, you're ready for joinery. This is a great way to make four sided tapered legs, using a table saw.

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