Tall Kitchen Chair Project

Shapely Legs

The front and back legs are next on the agenda. As is common with good chairmakers, I select riftsawn stock to make chair legs. The riftsawn figure looks pretty much the same on all four main faces of the legs — so the wood figure is not distractingly different on adjacent faces.

For the Chair and Legs Diagrams, Exploded Views, and Materials List, click here to download the PDF

The front leg is 1-3⁄4″ square for its width and thickness. Cut them exactly to length, and then move to the table saw to raise the tenon on the end. This must fit tightly in the notch you formed in the seat blanks. I set the blade on my saw to 1/4″ high and sliced the shoulders of the tenon. Following that, I used a typical tenoning jig on my saw to form the three faces of the tenon (technically, they would be called the cheeks, but that term seems a bit out of place when you are looking at the legs). When you have done this on all the legs, divide them into rights and lefts and mark where the notches (again, technically dadoes or housings) for the footrest will go. Mount a 3/4″ dado head in your table saw and make the cuts 7/16″ deep. Now taper all four sides of the legs to match the details in the Drawings. I use a shop-made tapering jig, but any method will do. When you are done with that, break the edges with a 1/4″ roundover bit in your router table. Keep it away from the shoulders of the tenons! I prefer to sand the front legs at this point in the process … it just gets the task out of the way. When you’ve carefully gone all the way up through 220-grit, you can set them aside and move on to the back legs.

Once you’ve measured out your table leg templates, pick out the wood for your legs (our author prefers rift sawn stock) and begin making the cuts.

The back legs are a bit more complicated, as they have a little dogleg bend in them. I make an exact template of the side profile of the back legs from 1/2″ plywood. Then I use the template to lay out the leg on oversized stock, trying to match the flow of the grain in the wood to the bend in the leg. This detail makes the leg much stronger than if the grain ran off the leg shape (in other words, it avoids “short grain” issues).

You can use a bandsaw to make the cuts on the back legs, but a jigsaw allows for a bit more control.

When you have marked out your legs on 1-3⁄4″ thick stock, cut them out, staying just a hair outside of the lines. A band saw will work well for this task, but I just use a good quality jigsaw to do the cutting.

Put a pattern routing bit on your router table to finish trimming out the shape on the back legs using the template as your guide.

Then, chuck a pattern-routing bit into your router table and use the template to perfectly shape the legs. I use short tacks to attach the template, because later the legs will be tapered and the tiny nail holes will be cut off.

Take the back legs to the table saw to cut off the ends to your back legs to avoid any tearout the router might cause.

An important note: don’t attempt to rout across the end grain of the legs — it presents too great a possibility for chipping and tearout (which would be a huge problem at this point in the process). After you’ve pattern routed the legs to shape, use a crosscut jig on the table saw to slice the ends of the legs to their proper angle and length.

To help secure a better connection with the rest of the chair, take this opportunity to cut notches using a full kerf blade and a crosscutting jig.

I chose to make notches (OK, they’re dadoes) where the legs join the seat for added strength and stability. I located the back notches while the front legs were fitted into the seats.

To make the proper saw cuts for the dadoes in the back legs, set a temporary saw fence to align the leg and the angle.

I formed them on my table saw using my crosscut jig with a temporary fence screw in place. As with the tenons on the front legs, this is where you have to choose right and left legs, and machine them accordingly.

Place a toggle clamp on your saw to set the back leg up for tapering and keep your fingers free of the cut.

When that step is concluded, you need to finish tapering the back legs.

To set-up the leg tapering jig, mark the end of the leg so you know where to start the cut.

This is a multi-step process for which I use a piece of plywood with screwed-on fences and a toggle clamp to keep my fingers safe.

Once you have the makeshift jig in position, start making the cut continuing the angle which you marked earlier.

After the tapering is done, step back to the router table with the 1/4″ roundover bit and break the appropriate edges on the legs. Once again, after the major machining steps are done on the back legs, I get right to sanding them smooth.