Curvy legs

I wanted to try my hand at curvy legs for the little table I designed with SketchUp (image on the right — click on the image to enlarge it). The best way to accomplish this is to resaw the board to get thin pieces. I estimated that resawing the pine to a thickness somewhere between 0.060″ and 0.100″ would be best, to minimize spring-back following the glue-up. This was important, to get the correct angle to glue the (more) upright portion of the legs that connect to the underside of the table top.

Resawing was an uneventful event with the new Driftmaster fence and the Resaw King blade — until I was finished resawing, that is (I had to use lacquer thinner remove the sticky pitch from the blade and the guide bearings after this operation):

Glue-up of two legs goes well when both are done at the same time; I used three layers of the resawn board per leg. In this next photo I apply and distribute the glue (Unibond 800):

Then the two legs go into the mold — in a separate article I will show how to make this two-part mold:

The results are great. Spring-back was only one inch:

Cutting to width, to remove the bulk of the glue that squeezed out:

Now it was time to make sure the spacing is correct, to get the scarf joint at the proper angle:

I suspect the scarf joint will not be long enough to hold the corner joints. I hope that epoxy will hold the joint together; if it does not, it means the bevel must be longer. I can always wish, right? What follows now: Sanding, prior to gluing up this part of the legs.

— Al Navas