The fun part of this design is making the legs appear to go through the shelves. The method I settled on is doweling, again inspired by Krenov who used them in his cabinetwork. Looking ahead to the assembly stage makes you realize that you need a way to faithfully track the individual leg pieces and have them stay in the right alignment. Also it should be noted that wood movement in this situation could be a problem because if the shelves expand in thickness the force will be in line against the glued dowels. If they shrink in thickness, gaps can appear. The work was done at the lowest cycle of humidity of the year, I’ve kept the shelves 1/4″ thick, and am hoping they wont thicken up appreciably during the summer.
Here’s how the process went for the legs. They were prepared into rectangular blanks, marked and numbered, crosscut into sections, and holes drilled for dowels. One key step was to mark a forty-five degree line on the top of each section from the center to the inside corner. This was the reference for later assembly. Also, a small nail hole was drilled along that line and inside of the eventual leg circumference. These temporary, removable nails provided a way for the blanks to stay fixed and not rotate around the dowel when the shaping was done.
As the pictures show, a nail was placed into the first block, placed against a stop, and the next block above it tapped tightly against it. After that process I inserted temporary dowels that were sanded in the drill press to be fractionally smaller. Then the blocks were assembled, taped together, and the layout lines drawn on for band sawing. After that they were put in between some puppets and further layout lines drawn. The drawknife, spokeshave, block plane, file and sandpaper process brought them to their final shape.
After drawknife and spokeshaves
Exploded leg
Next time: shaping the top, finishing, and assembly.
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