Woodworker's Journal 2009-33-5, страница 42

Turn Away from Carving

After cutting the leg's shape in one plane, tape the waste material back into place, rotate the blank 90°, and cut the leg's complementary shape in the adjacent plane. This is a typical process for creating cabriole legs.

I turned the feet on my legs on the lathe, which very quickly transforms a square foot blank into a perfectly round foot, but — as you can see here — turning this eccentric form on the lathe can be somewhat risky business. Although it is my personal preference to form the feet in this manner, if you're unsure of yourself on the lathe, you can fashion each foot with hand tools, using a circle scribed on the pad at the bottom of the foot as your guide.

to hand tools to fair the surfaces of the cabriole legs. (I would recommend that you not use a skip-tooth blade because you want the surfaces to be reasonably smooth.) Plan your cuts so that the pieces will fall from the band saw in large sections, because you're going to need them when you make the next set of cuts.

After making all the cuts on the first face, tape the cut-offs back into

place. This way you'll have a square blank to maneuver under the band saw blade when you rotate that blank 90 degrees. (You can discard the very small pieces from under the foot.)

Lay the pattern back into place on the adjacent face, and re-mark any areas that have been concealed by the tape. Then begin sawing the adjacent face. You may need to re-tape some of the pieces as you make the second set of cuts — it's essential that you maintain a square blank throughout the sawing process (photo, above left).

There are two ways to shape the round foot and the round pad beneath the foot. You can lay out the foot using a compass to delineate the pad on the end grain at the bottom of the leg and then — using the circle as a reference — shape the pad and foot with carving tools and rasps. This is an effective approach, although it is time-consuming.

I prefer to shape the foot and pad on the lathe because it's

Once the foot has been shaped, work the remaining surfaces of each leg with a drawknife to remove saw marks and to begin fairing the leg shape. (And you're right: the author is using the drawknife upside down.)

quicker and produces feet and pads that are truly round. I should point out, however, that this is not a technique that should be attempted by anyone who lacks experience in lathe work, because it requires you to work against an asymmetrically mounted and unbalanced form in the lathe.

To perform this work on the lathe, you must mount the centered top of the post against the drive center of the lathe and the centered bottom of the pad below the foot against the tailstock of the lathe. Place a tool-rest into position and manually turn the part through several rotations to ensure that this eccentric form misses the rest all the way around. Then — very cautiously — begin to turn the pad and foot with a roughing gouge and scraping tools. I have found that this turning process works best if you periodically remove some of the excess material above the heel of the foot with a drawknife as the foot emerges.

When the pad and foot have been shaped, you're ready to create the finished shape of your cabriole leg. I find this process to be among the most pleasurable of woodshop experiences, in part because it allows me an extended opportunity to put a variety of hand tools through their paces. I typically do this work

42 October 2009 Woodivorker's Journal