sometimes you want to make a tapered leg for a table
it's got tapers on two sides or even on four sides whichever way you want to do
it you may want exactness and that's what this jig that I've developed here
does this jig has a tapered platform inside here and on that you slide a
plane like this so your plane rides on the outside carriage and you take your
shavings down to thickness like this so this piece of wood is already tapered
place this into the jig rough-sawn and then you start taking shavings along
this until you reach bottom and it takes no more shaving then you end up with a
perfectly tapered leg flip it over do the second face and you end up with a
tapered leg that's equal on width with the taper from top to bottom on both
sides and that's what I want to show you now so what I've done here have made the
jig very simply it comprises of three screws in each side two screws in the
end here you can see here so I've got two screws holding this stop this is
purely to stop the wood from sliding from under the plane so that goes out
and oops not quite enough so this should come off I'm not glued this it's not
really necessary if you want to glue it you can but it's really not necessary
there's one piece here's the stop I used oak for the stop but you could use pine
pine would hold up just fine and then inside here I've just put one screw on
the tapered pieces so I'll show you that I've just used one screw to Center it
there to make sure it doesn't slide or move and that's enough it is not going
to be under any kind of pressure this one here so the only thing we've got to
do now is this taper the support and that again is simple enough what I did I
just took a piece of wood like this and I've made a mark 7/8 of an inch that's the
finish size at the bottom here 7/8 and an inch and a half at the top and then I
just took a similar piece of wood that would accommodate both pieces so my
tapered cut on one will help with the other so I get two pieces from one piece
of wood I'm going to slide the saw down here get lined up cut it away from the
line just enough to be able to plan it it's going off track so just correct it
flip over and come from the other end
down between the lines and up to here put the two together in the vise not that way flush
the underside and make sure obviously you're working straight with your wood
and then make your taper, perfected it with the hand plane take out
the highs and lows
check your line
little bit more and then you have your two pieces those are the carries that
the plane will ride on to taper the legs exactly now let me show you what I would
have do when I'm putting this together take your two side pieces place them in
readiness these I just simply put these two together in the vise and then I took
my electric drill drill through both sides with a one and three no with a
3/16 drill here drill through both bump bump and bump and then countersink if
you want to with pine you don't really need to it will be up to you here is my
caries what I wanted to do I wanted to make sure that the the face of the
carriage that I was using had no twist in it because otherwise the wood will
will twist and turn in the cut as you start to plane your tapered leg so
you've got to be careful to make sure that doesn't happen to you so I think
this one went here
so screw the side on like this as I say you can glue it if you want to it's
really not necessary though I've got everything pre drilled because this has
already been assembled once so I've got the courage the width of the plane just
add about 1/8 of an inch so whatever plane you're going to use
like this one I'm using a number 4 and 1/2 here so it takes this one but it
also will take usually one of these big wooden ones and actually the span is
enough when I put the side pieces in here the span is enough to take even the
narrower number 4 sits on here just fine so you don't have an issue when you come
to whichever plane you choose to use you can use it n stop goes on here and I've
left this a little bit lower than the thickness of my the end of my leg I'll
show you that in a second
this is the finish on my taper here can you see I left this lower here just by
1/8 of an inch so this butts up against it and I'm not going to catch this with
my plane then these pieces here go on here again
just one quick screw in the middle there like that and another one on this side
and you have a tapered jig and of course you can always use this carriage this
main carriage without these you can always add different different shapes
different tapers here to accommodate any size of leg now when you put this in the
vise put your leg in here then you will see how effective this is for thickening
and taking off the shaving you need for your tapered leg so as soon as I
listen it'll hit bottom there just hit bottom no more shaving that means I'm
dead to size I'm dead square this face is exactly the same distance from this
face as this one is from this face they will be I'm pretty sure let's take a
look what we've got here is 23.03 or somewhere
around there and then I go to this one about the same distance in 22.4 so it's
very close that's close enough for anybody for anybody in woodworking
that's my tapered leg that's how you make that carriage it works perfectly
it's very effective and it will be as accurate as you would get from a tapered
jig on any machine pretty much so I think you'll enjoy that makes it very
simple very doable and you can do it on a work bench in an area like this