White Oak Console Table: Base

     In a table with drawers there are a lot of components that make up the guts, but they all depend on a solid base. The base is chiefly comprised of 4 legs and 3 aprons.

I begin with the legs.

Leg should be chosen from slash grain (bastard), if possible, the diagonal grain will present uniformly on all four sides.  I try to select leg material carefully, as these will be part of the show face of the table.

As you can see here I have laminated 6/4 stock to form 2.5" square blanks.  I orient the blanks to show the most uniform from a frontal view of the table, relegating flatsawn facets to the rear of the table.

Note the marking, we are gonna be dealing with joinery soon and we don't want legs to change orientation, causing us to mortise the wrong face.

I keep the legs square as long as possible, only tapering them once the joinery has been cut.

Gang the legs and lay out the mortises on the proper faces.

I make every effort to make things as clearly marked as possible, and off we are to the slot mortiser:

I was hesitant to build this machine initially, (woodgears.ca design), but could not pass up the time saving it offers.  For the amount of M&T I do, it produces a quick/clean mortise in a few sweeps of the bit with minimal setup.  This is another example of where clean layout pays off.  Adjust the x,y,z motions to the outlines of the shadowed mortise and begin hogging out material.


If all goes well, here is what you get:

 Cheers!