Child's Sunday School Chair - Part 3: Legs

For the legs, I started out with squared blanks of poplar, made them octagonal using a jack plane and then round(ish) with a spokeshave.  I tried turning the right rear leg, but the poplar was too soft to stay put on the pikes of my bungee lathe and I almost ruined the part.

Legs marked

At the upper end of the legs, I marked a line 4 1/4" from the top to mark the beginning of a taper, and 1 1/4" from the top to mark the tenon area.

Top of legs marked

Added a 1" diameter circle on top end as something to shoot for

In the picture below, you can see an original leg next to two new legs.  The original did not taper all the way to the end - it has a "shoulder" of sorts.  The original mortises were not tapered and the legs had straight cylindrical tenons.  My chair has through tapered mortises, into which I fit tapered tenons.  I experimented with two methods of forming the tenon - one like the original leg and one with a gradual taper from the 4 1/4" line.

Two methods of starting the tenon

Either way, I had to make the end about 1" diameter so that it would fit into the tapered tenon cutter that I made (and wrote about here) a few months ago.

Tenon cutter cutting a test piece

When cutting the real thing, I used two squares to make sure I was cutting straight
(tenon cutter is held horizontally in the vise)

The middle part of the legs contains undercarriage joinery and so it remained cylindrical, but the lower end of the legs tapered down to 1 1/8" at the feet.

Before fitting the stretchers to the legs, the legs had to be fitted to the seat.  So next up was to bore and taper the leg mortises.  To do this, the sightlines were laid out on the underside of the seat.

Layout for boring the leg mortises

I used a sliding bevel to guide the resultant angle, with a mirror placed on the bench to my left so I could monitor progress without stepping to the side.  A combination square was set along the sightline so I could monitor how well I was doing in that direction.

Boring at the proper resultant angle

A combo square with the edge of its blade right on the sightline ensures no leaning left-right

It's not in the above picture, but to avoid splintering the exit side of the hole, I clamped a sacrificial piece of wood to the seat.  After boring the holes, I tapered them with the reamer I made a few months ago (and wrote about here and here).

Reaming the hole to a 6° taper

The picture above shows the alignment of the top of the reamer with both the right edge of the square's blade and the sightline.  This helped make sure I don't change the angle of the mortise while tapering it.

All four legs fitted into their mortises

Next up: stretchers and fitting the undercarriage.