A New Experience- Building a Fancy Humidor

 

Part 2- You say you never made a cabriole leg!!

 

 

I could tell I was in for more than I realized, once the final design was approved. Now, I’m no stranger to cabinet construction but the humidity control and fancy legs were both new to me. This is going to be a real learning experience.

 

I decided to begin with the Queen Anne legs while I searched for a local sawyer who could slice the thick slabs into usable thickness. As a side note here- I also had to learn how to draw Queen Anne legs in Sketchup. I’d still be struggling with that if it wasn’t for the help of an acquaintance who is a Sketchup Guru. I searched the Internet for videos on making the legs. The easiest to follow was by Chad Stanton- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kkpNTTz5HM . With the full sized template created, I laid out 5 blanks- yes I figured I mess up at least one leg.

 

 

I figured it would be easier to do all of the “square†work before cutting the curves. Firing up the hollow chisel morticer, I create the mortices for the apron tenons.

 

 

Next up were the square cuts for the leg top. Every video I watched showed these cuts being made with the bandsaw. I knew there is no way on God’s green earth that I’m steady enough to make those cuts and have them perfect. I need to sleep on this. I have all of these neat tools; certainly one of them should be able to do this. AHA!!!!!!!! The old Delta Tenon jig!

 

 

 

 

Now, with those cuts made, it’s on to the bandsaw. Cut two parallel sides, tape the waste pieces back in place. I tried leaving a tiny sliver uncut at the very end of the saw pass. It held the waste piece a little better until the tape was in place. Rotate the leg 90° and cut the other two parallel sides. Remove the waste pieces/tape and there you are! I left the “pads†on the bottom of the legs extra-long to make sure I could level the table legs without cutting into the fancy “footâ€.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O Boy! Sanding time. I admit it- I hate to sand. Well, there are no flat surfaces and lots of bandsaw marks. If only there was a way to hold the legs…WAIT!!!!.... a JIG!!!!! I made a jig- actually two jigs- to hold the legs horizontal so I could use the oscillating spindle sander. I needed two jigs because of the mirror image of the leg sides. One of the jigs is for two of the parallel sides and the other jig for the opposite two parallel sides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The legs still required a lot of hand sanding but the spindle sander removed the saw marks.

 

The rest of the base was pretty straight forward. Tendons cut on each end of the apron pieces. A fancy ogee routed on the bottom edges. A slot cut for the top clips. A dry fit and a little work on the tenons. I needed to cut a 45° angle on the ends of the tenons so they would fit full depth when both apron pieces were inserted in a leg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Found a sawyer and he cut 3 slabs into 4/4 slices. Charged me $10- I gave him $20.

 

In the next part, I’ll start building the cabinet.

Lew, thanks for the leg tutorial, that was awesome, to actually see a series of images like this put it all into the realm of understandable instruction. The legs turned out great. Did you do anything as far as care for which part of the board you cut the legs out of, and did you attempt to book match grain on the legs?

While building a coupe of the rockers I learned how valuable a card scraper is to avoid a bunch of hand sanding on curves. You may want to give that a try if you ever do this again.

Thanks, John, for the very kind words- they are truly appreciated.

 

I did pick thru the stack and found an especially nice, straight grained slab, from which I made the legs. When laying out the legs, I mislabeled one but in the end it wasn't apparent.

 

I am becoming a believer in the card scraper. I actually used one on most of the flat pieces- save a bunch on sandpaper and produces a smooth surface. I haven't gotten the hang of it on curved surfaces, yet. Especially those tighter radius areas where the grain changes direction.