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Showing results for tags 'leg'.
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I wanted a nice tripod as a gun rest and for occasional camerawork. I settled on the big heavy studio type they are better for cameras as they dampen vibrations and for a gun rest it'll be great because of the same thing - - mass. I won't be hiking anywhere with this thing. The wood is Maple I harvested on the property. The steel is a plate I got in the fleabay, some extra heavy steel gas pipe and various A-36 grade crud steel from Hillman I got at the BORG. The knobs are blanks from Carr Lane that I drilled and tapped. Ii is only mostly done. The angle head and gun rest are not even designed yet. I have some fill work and paint to apply, Plus I need to create the locking clamp for the head and gun rest that will slide up and down in the steel pipe/tube. I'll use another Carr Lane knob for that. The sanding and applied coatings are yet to be done to the wood too. Also there is the feet to finish. I'm going to turn steel spikes for one end and put rubbers on the other. The inside leg parts will pull out and reverse to invoke the spikes or rubbers. So far I'm really happy with how it's turned out. The leg angle adjusters work flawlessly and are very robust. The action of the leg extensions is smooth as silk. And it is solid as the Rock of Gibraltar First I made these three little knuckles. They are part of how the leg angles are set and locked. The first pieces of 3/8" steel drilled with 1/2" and tapped for 5/16-18 one side and clearance through the other. I made them to be clamps by clamping them together for drilling, Then sanding 0.010" or so off the faces with the hole half then re clamping them on the 1/2" shafting and welding one end. This way when I engage the tapped hole on the end opposite the welds they would squeeze around one of the shafts locking the action. You'll see~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Then I welded up six of these below clamps for the sliding legs In the pic above you can see the one with the knob has a little flat piece of steel inside the box. That is to spread the pressure of the clamp screw across the wood to prevent damage. In the pictures of the tripod you only see three of these but there are six that will be on it in the final assembly. Then I turned three of these 2' maple shafts Of course this is not the final shape. I had to rip them and pop them in my planer to make them skinny. like so: The above is two halves re-glued together. I left a little lip at the end to fasten a block of wood. Here is the planer rig = pretty basic. It was necessary that they be very accurate in dimension and each be exactly the same as the other half. I would have to rip the glue up twice more so I glued them offset like so: And then mount little blocks to them to keep them stable and flat on my table saw To finally get this shape (see the piece in the center) Here are some of the tripod's leg angle locks From below looking up The leg height adjusts so smoothly
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Squared up a blank for a rear rocker leg and backrest, and chucked it up on our Laguna 16/43 lathe. I have a home made long tool rest I made that works wonderful. Then I noticed my son standing around, this was last night, he knows better than to stand around me. He also knows better than to say "I'm bored" the word "bored" is a bad 5 letter word in our world, but sometimes the kids slip up and say it anyway. This time, he did not say "I'm bored" but he was idle, so I put him to work. I showed him the basics, and safety, and I told him "it's all yours buddy" and he took it! He's using an Easy Wood Tools Mid Size Rougher. A great solid tool, easy for sure! After he roughed it out, I took over and brought it to finish. The right end is the top with a tenon for a pillow rail. I have two of these made and they are headed for steam bending next. Go Pats!!!!!!!!
- 26 replies
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Awhile back a customer of mine asked me if I could restore, or do a complete makeover of a settee he purchased off of eBay. The settee was from the early 1800's and he wanted the entire piece stripped, gone through, new rails fabricated, and various repairs. The settee had gone through a life of abuse, and it ended up with a thousand holes in it, upholstered with some gosh awful tweed fabric, actually layers of upholstery ended up on it, and long story short, it was a mess, and he wanted a new settee. About the only thing he really liked on it, were the legs, and the beautiful curled maple they were made from. Later I will show a photo montage of the entire project, but this story is about how I repaired a seemingly destroyed balled foot. My customer wanted me to just cut it off, and make all the legs the same size, I told him I could save it. The image below is how the foot looked when I received the settee in my shop. As you can see there was hole in the center of the foot, that was to accommodate casters that were on all four legs. The hole for the casters weakened the ball foot and it finally gave way, cracked and just sheared off. The next image is after I stripped down the entire settee, and started in on the refinishing process. I know I know! That lovely patina, gone! It tore me up to sand it out, and take the project down to bare wood again, but hey, I was getting paid to do a job. So at first look, it does look dismal, but I knew there was hope for this leg, I could save it! I've seen worse! So I set about to paring away at the damaged wood with my Marples chisel, I was not worried about shaping the leg repair to be a perfect 90 degrees to accept the repair block, because I knew I had a trick up my sleeve to make the final fit, just perfect. I pared away at the ball foot just so the repair block fit reasonably well. I used Maple, and I tried to get a good matching grain orientation as you'll see in the images below. The trick here is once you get the fit close, use a piece of sand paper to bring the fit to final. Do not fold the paper in half, this will only distort both sides of the fit as you pull the sandpaper out from between the repair block and the piece to be repaired. Each time you must insert the sandpaper in between the two pieces, then as you apply pressure to the repair block, pull the sand paper out. After time, and with a bit of patience, the sandpaper will have created a custom perfect fit including matching any valleys or highs, or uneven shaping of the repair area. The repair block will conform to the odd shape of the piece to be repaired. Keep inserting the sand paper, then pull out, over and over. The fit will materialize. And you'll have a perfect fitting repair block. Finally, time to glue up the repair block. After the glue set up, I then commenced to paring away at the repair block to rough it in close. My Marple 1" chisel worked beautifully for this task. I almost have her ready for final shaping. After I got it close, I shaped the repair block down to match the existing ball with shoulder as well. note the grain orientation. To bring the repair block to final shape, I used a file and then I blended the repair in with 220 sand paper, and it turned out pretty close to the original shape. This was a successful repair, it took all of an hour to get it all wrapped up, and we got to save the other three legs, remember the customer originally said to just cut this leg down and the rest as well to match, I would not! Later I'll show some images of the final restoration, you cannot even see this repair, it looked splendid after all was said and done. Cheers!
- 35 replies
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- settee
- curly maple
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