Furniture & Cabinet Making - The Woodworkers Institute

Dodgy legs

Derek Jones

17 May 2012

Machining a perfect rule joint from scratch is tricky at the best of times. My preferred technique is to creep up to a good fit in a series of shallow passes with the router and to make sure the leaves are a reasonable thickness in the first place. I’ve learnt this by repairing more than I’ve made and it’s a really good way of identifying weaknesses in furniture construction.

As part of an ongoing project I’ve been carrying out repairs to a small drop-leaf table in readiness for polishing and recording the process for a book on the subject of French polishing.

I quite enjoy grafting on new sections of material to carry out a repair. It begins by sourcing a good match for colour and grain pattern in the first instance and then for the join to be as fine as it can be. In most cases there’s little scope for clamping so a rub joint or piece of tape has to suffice.

I used a small core bit to get close to the profile on the first repair finally achieving a match with scraper.

The extra fine Japanese saw proved very useful in shaping up a couple of other repairs as well.

I didn’t notice at first but this table has obviously been in the wars. In fact an entire leg had been replaced at some point and it was interesting to compare the accuracy of the turned details. Close but no cigar I think.