Cabriole Legs Session 5: Hand Shape the Leg

Let's jump into the final shaping feet first. I clamp the leg upside down in a vice to work on the foot pad. Draw diagonals across the pad to establish a center, and then I set my compass to eleven sixteenths of an inch and swing a one and three eighths inch circle. Next, I undercut the waist areas around the pad with a handsaw. And I'll just wanna cut up to just shy of my circle. Now I use a chisel to pair away the circle, and I just start out on the edges, I just take off our corners, and just keep working your way around like that. And finally, I'll smooth any facets with a little bit of sandpaper, just to give us a nice... Nice round pad on the bottom. Now to shape the rest of the foot, I turn to a rasp, and also I use a broken piece of sandpaper belt like I did on the pad as well. And I use the rasp to cut back the corners on the foot, these three corners, to try to create a nice round shape to the foot. And see how quickly the rasp cuts, and at first you just wanna take the corner off, and then gradually start putting that round the shape in there. And once I have it close with the rasp, I'll use a strip of 80 grit sandpaper and give it the old shoe shine move to refine that round profile. And finally, I go back to the rasp, to curve the bottom of the foot from the toe down to the pad and from the ankle and the sides of the foot, down to the pad. So take your time as you go, and then pause to inspect your shape often. And remember once you remove it, you can't put it back on. So let's give it a shot. Now with the bottom of the foot shaped, it's time to move on to the rest of the leg. Now the fun really begins, we get to shape the rest of the leg. And here's a great tip for holding the leg while you shape, clamp it on a bar clamp. And then clamp the bar clamp into your vice, and this holds the leg in a great working position and allows me to loosen it up and turn the leg as I go around. So our first job is to remove the sharp corners, and I use the spoke shape to do this. All I'm doing is taking these corners right down to those first lines that we made. So just shave away, paying attention to the grain direction, if you're getting a lot of tear out in one direction, just switch directions to keep the cuts smooth. Let's see how it goes. Now the areas at the top of the foot and the back of the knee are too tight for the spokeshave. So here I switched to a sharp chisel, simply pair away the corner with the bevel side down. So there, we just wanna take this corner right down to those first subtle lines. Now, if you don't own a spokeshave, you can do the same thing with a rasp, and here we'll turn to another corner. Just hold the rest perpendicular to the corner and shave it down. And I'll switch to the convex side when I get into the corners there. Again just going right down to that first subtle lines. Okay, next we're gonna cut the secondary chamfers on either side of our first chamfer. So I'll go back to the spokeshave, and just hold it, at about 45 degrees to the corner or what used to be the corner, and then we'll just peel down this second line till it meets our first chamfer. Now, as soon as I start getting some tear out like that, I switch to the rasp just to finish off that last little sweep at the angle. Then I'll just continue all the way around until all four corners are done. Now we switch to the rasp to blend the facets into one smooth rounded corner. Now the flat side of the rasp works best on these long gentle curves. It levels out the bumps and dips much like a plain wood. So just gently roll the rasp over the corners, working in both directions to produce a smooth, round corner. And never saw with the rasp in one place, the rasp should typically be sweeping across the surface as it cuts. Otherwise you run the risk of digging a trench into your leg, and you don't want that at this point. You've invested a lot of time in getting the leg smooth, so take it easy and be careful. And also once you get into these tighter curves, I'll roll the rasp over to use this convex side to fit. So let's... Let's take these facets down to a nice, smooth round. So as you're rasping, you can pause and just sight down your lines, you should have nice even smooth lines. You can use your hand, you can always feel imperfections, but really it's a visual thing. Here we've got the shape, I think pretty well done, it's quite rough from the rasp but you can see we've got nice, smooth transitions, especially down here at the foot and the ankle, and at the back of the knee, and I think we're ready to go to sanding. So with the shaping complete, all that's left is to smooth the surface with some sandpaper. Now this is a prototype leg, and my goal here is just to see what the shape of the leg is like. So I'd probably not bother with the sanding, but on a real leg, you'd wanna sand it smooth. And I really liked these Velcro pads that you can get at woodworking specialty stores. They're stiff, yet flexible enough to navigate the curves and wrap around the shape of the leg. And I find it gives me greater control and speed than a folded sheet of paper. Now that said, you could certainly get the job done without the pad, but what I don't recommend is using a power sander, it's just too easy to ruin the flowing curves you've established with the rasp. So at this point, I would sand to about 120 or 150 grit, and then leave the final sanding after the piece is assembled. So one last test... I've heard it said, that a well-designed cabriole leg will stand on its own, so let's see how ours does. Sometimes it's hard to get the foot set on the pad. Yeah. This one wants to fall back a little bit. There we go.