Cabriole Legs: Session 4: Rough Cut the Blank and Prep for Shaping

Now we're ready to cut out the leg on the band saw. I usually use a 1/4-inch to 3/8-inch-wide blade to navigate the curves on the leg. And I cut off the waste block first on the miter saw. So when you make your cuts, take your time. It's okay to be wide of the mark, but it's a problem if you cut into the lines, because you're gonna have to remove that material by hand to even it out. So cut out the leg, leaving the bridge pieces intact, up here and down at the ankle. And leave the back cuts to last because if you cut those out now, you'll be cutting into the face of the adjoining side and you'll lose your navigation points. So let's fire up the band saw. After we make these face cuts, we'll go ahead and make the back profile cuts. Once I cut this out, I'll remove this line back here. So I'll have to reattach these two back cutouts with some double-stick tape. And then we'll go back and make that final cut. Sometimes it's hard to get that backing off of there. There we go. And we'll just reposition this about where it was. Leave a little room for that saw curve, and then the same with this piece on the foot. Okay, we're ready to go. Now all that's left is to cut the bridges off and we're ready for some hand-shaping. There, now we have the leg roughed out and it's really startin' to take shape. Let's get on to doing some smoothing. Now we have our major curves established from the band saw, but as you can see, we're still dealing with a square cross section with some pretty sharp corners. The next step is to round these edges and do some final shaping and smoothing in the leg. But before we take away any more wood, let's add some guidelines with a pencil to help us remove an even amount of waste as we hand-shape the rest of the leg. All you need to do, find the narrowest portion on the ankle and hold your pencil right in the middle. And I use my finger as a guide. And then just pull your line and follow the profile all the way up and down. Repeat it again on all four surfaces. I always start right there at the middle of the ankle. And then we'll flip the leg over, and we need to do a mirror image of these lines, again, starting right there at the middle of the ankle. Work your way up. And back down on the heel. Now, these lines show us how far down the secondary bevel or the extent of the roundness on the corner is going to go. This is the furthest point. Okay, now we have to draw another set of eight lines. These lines start halfway from where we were before. So really just a quarter of the thickness of that ankle. And again, the same action as before. All the way around. And the mirror image. And this last set of lines shows us how far down to take the corner. So we'll take this corner right down flat to that first set of lines, and then roll it a bit, and go down to the second set of lines. And each corner then will have three facets to it. And remember, these lines, they don't need to be perfect. They're only guidelines and give you a rough idea of how far to go with your tools.