Continuing on the carved Williamsburg Tea Table - this week I will show the making of the cabriole legs, their associated mortises, and the skirt tenons. We've shown making these types of components in previous entries, but I improve my methods each time, so this one is slightly different.
Again for reference, shown below is the assembled Tea Table:
Step 1: I shaped the cabriole leg by tracing over a scanned-in image of the table.
Step 2: Give the Leg face some generous thickness with the Push/Pull tool. Then copy the Leg, move over to the right and rotate 90 degrees
Step 3: Move one of the Leg components over to totally overlap the other Leg. The relative position is not critical, just so they totally overlap.
Step 4: Encircle the combined leg components with the Select Tool to "select" all faces and edges. Execute "Intersect Selected". Now clean up the waste with the Erase Tool. Unfortunately, I don't know an easy way to shape the leg with further rounding. There is no file/spokeshave/drawknife tool in SketchUp. At the ankle, this leg should be practically a circle in cross-section.
Step 5: The following steps will show how to connect the Leg to the Skirts with mortise & tenon joints. After positioning the skirts against the leg faces, draw construction lines to obtain a centered 5/16" wide tenon. In this case, the tenons can be about 7/8" long without interfering with one another inside the Leg. Use the Line Tool to trace out the outline of the Skirt tenons.
Step 6: Right click on the Leg and select "Hide". Now you have a full view of the Skirt Tenons. With Push/Pull Tool, push the tenon face down to the bottom edge of the Skirts.
Step 7: Shorten the height of the tenons with the Push/Pull Tool.
Step 8: "Unhide" the Leg and turn on X-ray View. With the Line Tool trace out the rectangular shape of the tenon on the faces of the Leg.
Step 9: Using the Push/Pull Tool, push in the rectangular face traced in the previous step. The length of the mortise is 7/8".
Now we have a connected assembly of legs and skirts using the mortise and tenon joints. Below is the exploded view.
I may have one more entry on this Tea Table. I just have a few more details and it will be ready for construction.
Tim
http://killenwood.com
