This is an antique reproduction splay-legged table, although it goes by many other names as well. It is a small round table (25" x 23"x 23") with four turned cabriole legs, splayed equally in all views. The primary wood is curly maple with soft maple secondary (only used for the cleats attached to the top).
At the North Bennet Street School, we start each project by doing a full scale drawing. This helps us sort out issues of design, joinery, and procedure.
I realize it's hard to see, but the left half of the drawing is a front/side view; the table is symmetrical. The right half of the drawing is a diagonal view. This is important because the slope of the leg appears much more extreme in this view. A similar problem arises in putting a circular top on a square base. The overhang should be considered in both views. The upper part of the drawing is an above view of the table.
A Magic Block is a thick piece of wood that builds a table for you. One side and one end of the block are cut at the splay angles for the side and end of the table (in my case they are the same). The resulting corner is a model for the corner of your table. The block contains all the angles used in making the table. It provides a consistent, physical reference for setting up the machines.
This leg is crazier than it looks. Next to it is my pattern.
Leg Blank
Ok. This thing. Because the legs are splayed in both directions, the joints between the rails and the legs should be compound angles. However, compound angled tenons can be quite difficult and time consuming. To simplify things, one of the angles is, in effect, transferred to the leg.
Using my Magic Block, I ripped the blanks to a kite shape: the outside corner is obtuse; the inside corner is acute; and the other two corners are square. This actually makes the leg square when measured at the splay angle. Alakazam! The tenon can now be cut at a simple angle, rather than a compound one.
The turned cabriole legs are done by offset turning, meaning each leg is turned on two different axes. This can be done with either parallel or intersecting axes; I used intersecting axes. The result it a turned leg that tapers towards the back corner of the blank, but has a regularly centered foot, like on the pattern in the picture If it doesn't make sense, don't worry. The pictures are coming up.
This is after turning on the first "real" centers.
First Turning
The real centers of the blank are used to turn the pommel, where the blank goes from square to round, and the pad on the foot. You have to be careful when turning the pad, though. If you take too much off of the bottom, you might turn away your second center. Instead, you'll have to leave the pad heavy and come back to it.
Bandsawing saves time and makes the second turning less scary.
Bandsawn Shape
My instructor, Dan Faia, recommended that I bandsaw the rough shape of the leg, now. This not only expedites the second turning by removing most of the waste, but also removes a lot of the mass. On the second centers, the leg sits crooked on the lathe. This makes it spin kind of crazy, so the less wood, the better.
Here it is! The detail at the top, the taper to the ankle, and the foot are all turned on the second center. The detail and taper are done the same as normal turning. The foot, on the other hand, is to one side of the center, so it swings around. I had trouble with it chipping so I just used the scraper to shape it.
The two axes cross just under the pommel. This hides any incongruities between the pommel and the bead. Only a little clean-up is needed. The intersection point is determined in the layout. The pommel and the ankle are located first. A line is then drawn connecting the centers of the two. It is projected to the ends of the blank, where you can set a marking gauge to the line to find the offset centers.
The legs are done! And I have a decision to make. When choosing my legs, I was careful to use rift-sawn blanks. The diagonal grain wasn't consistent enough to do bulls-eyes (flat-sawn corners out) so I went with flow lines (quarter-sawn corners out). The sample leg was somewheree in between, which leads to a kind of ugly foot. My sample leg actually blew out on one side of the foot, but I was able to repair it using the cut-off from milling. The problem is that one of my other legs came off the lathe while I was sanding and got a little dinged up. So, do I go with the consistent grain or the cleaner surface?
This entire table was taken from a single 8/4 board, for optimal color match between the parts. After the legs were cut off, the rail and top pieces were resawn. This allows me to have some fun with the grain patterns.
Ah, the dry fit. When you're given false hope for the glue-up. Oh well. I still like it. I thought I was having trouble getting the joints to close up, but the clamps whipped them into shape. The problem is that maple is almost white, but gaps are black. So even the tiniest gap is really obvious. It looks like someone took a sharpie to the joints. But not after clamping. Then it's perfect, like the clamps brought white-out...
Here are the four rails, almost finished. As I said before, they were resawn out of an 8/4 board. Also, the resawn pairs were taken out end to end. This gave me a great grain pattern where two corners are bookmatched and the other two have continuous grain.
After resawing and milling, the ends of the rails were cut to the correct angle (thank you, magic block). The mortises in the legs were cut at an angle so they were parallel to the floor. This allowed the tenons to be cut just like normal. Since there are no stretchers, the outside shoulder needs to be as thick as possible, so the tenons are positioned near the back of the rail.
After fitting the joints, I traced my ogee pattern and bandsawed and faired it. Then, I beveled the back edge of the curve so it wouldn't show.
This is where I am right now. The pieces double-stick taped to the legs are clamping blocks. Since the legs aren't square to each other, clamps can't get enough purchase to work. These blocks are actually the cut-offs from when I cut my rail angles. Always save your scraps, folks.
Here it is! I used a water-based aniline dye to get the color. At first it seemed a shame to stain the nice white maple, but I thought it was a good exercise. Also, maple naturally darkens over time, so maple antiques have a similar color. After the stain, I padded shellac and waxed the whole table. In the end, I'm happy with how the color came out and how much the curl popped. All in all, I'm quite satisfied.
If anyone lives in the Boston area, you can check out my table and some other great furniture at the North Bennet Street School Student Show. It's at the Boston Architectural College on Newbury Street.
