Posted by on Apr 3, 2014 in Furniture Design | Comments Off on Wooden Furniture Deserves DIY Wooden Furniture Feet

Rounded DIY Wooden Furniture Feet

 

wooden furniture feet_02_456kHere are some funny little wooden furniture feet I made from a left over chunk of  9”x 9” yellow pine beam. Couldn’t bear to throw out a stupid 12” off-cut from last year when I built the back post and b

eam style back deck cover… kinda glad I didn’t after all.

It was actually beside the fireplace and destined to save us a couple bucks in Natural Gas.

Wooden Furniture Feet_01_478k

Ok, Back To The Furniture Feet…

Anyways here’s a quick rundown on how I made ‘em…

1) Drew the centers for turning on the lathe then cut off the 4 corners down each side so I didn’t have to feel my teeth chatter as much roughing the cylinder from dead square

2) Turned it down to a cylinder of about 4” radius or 8” accross

3) Squared the 2 ends in the 12” Millwaukee Sliding Compound saw

4) I then cut a 5” disk off the cylinder – almost half the length as that was almost the height I need ed the legs to be

5) I cut the disk into quarters

6) Then I made a mark at 1” down from what was going to be the top edge of leg

7) After setting the saw to 15* degrees left of center I cut each leg at a 15 degree taper down to the foot (holding the piece on the left of the blade)  –  with the quarter 

circle of the leg on the left and the squared side of the leg on the right (against the blade)  – and repeated that for all 4 legs

15_degree_taper_showing_343k8) I swung the saw to 15* degrees right of center and repeated the process cutting the leg now on the right side of the blade, starting at my 1” mark down from the top edge. This time the quarter circle of the leg was to the right and the squared part of the leg was to the left (up against the blade)

9) That was the main cutting done. I decided to make a smaller foot that was the same shape as the bottom of the leg but inset a bit. I traced the shape onto a small chunk of ¾” maple and cut the shape 4 times on the bandsaw.

10) A little sanding smooth everywhere, glueing on the the inset foot onto the legs and it was done

 

bottom_inset_foot_360k

All it needed now was a prime and paint.

 

After they were done I realized that depending on the style of furniture they were used on these crazy little furniture feet could be used the way I made them with the curve facing out or…they could be spun around and use with the corner facing out and they looked pretty good like that also.

I honestly didn’t plan that, I mean I wish I could say I’m that good but sadly I am all to aware – I am not. Just dumb luck for this dumb ol’ carpenter.

NOTE: If you don’t have a lathe or know someone with one that could turn your starting block for you could also do all this on the sliding compound saw or a bandsaw. On the bandsaw you can of course cut a circle by using a fine blade around 1/8″-1/4″. On the sliding compound saw it will take quite a few cuts to get close to a circle shape followed by some sanding but it shouldn’t take much more than half an hour to get a nice clean circle shape to begin the quartering.

 

I hope this step by step is easy enough to follow and that you give it a try if you like the look of the legs. 

All the best,

Greg

 

 

 

 

 

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