# hexagonal tapered leg jig- Help!



## Mattty (18 May 2009)

Hi,

Has anyone got plans for a fully tapered hexagonal leg jig, or ideas formaking one. I'm struggling to come up with good plan.

(Steve Maskerey i need you!)

Thanks.


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## DaveL (18 May 2009)

Not a lot of help for you but I could do them on my router lathe. 8)


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## mailee (18 May 2009)

If you have a lathe you could just make a tapered jig to fit above it and run a router along it. Failing this it would have to be mounted with a screw centrally on a jig for the table saw so you can turn and index it for each side. HTH.


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## Mattty (18 May 2009)

Thanks chaps.

I had thought about the indexing option with a jig for my P/t. 
The other thing i though of was if i got a truly tapered square section using a jig for my TS, maybe i could then make a cradle jig that holds the timber at 45 degree's and is also angled this could then go through the PT. In theory i could then put it through, rotate 90 degree's, raise the bed, rinse repeat until i have equal facets. I think this would work as the new faces would be cut registering of the saw cut faces each pass...

My brain hurts! Any ideas please post.


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## Mattty (18 May 2009)

I think i've just sussed it and it's much easier than i was thinking... I will post tomorrow..


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## JohnBrown (19 May 2009)

I recently saw an on-line video of making a tapered round leg. The guy pinned a couple of circular "wheels" of different sizes to each end of an overlength piece of wood, and then used a straight bit in a router table. Seems to me that a hexagon could be done in the same way, although it should be slightly easier, since the circular taper requires (theoretically) an infinite number of passes.
The thing I'm not sure about is how to line up the hexagonal end pieces so that the faces are parallel and they are concentric. You might have to make some sort of jig with 120 degree cradles at each end.

Re-reading you posts, and noting your remarks about 45 degrees, I not sure now if you want a hexagon or an octogon...


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## Steve Maskery (19 May 2009)

I have a a standard lamp and coat tree made with a tapered hexagon. I can't find the photos of it, if I do I'll post them. The tree was a project by Chris Becksvoort in FWW and the lamp was a cut-down version of that.

Anyway, this is now I made it. No jigs!!

Start with your blank. It is rectangular, not square, in section.


```
|¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ |
|              |
|              | 
|              | 
|              | 
| _____________|
```

Then tilt your tablesaw to 60deg and cut to a regular hexagon.




```
/ ¯¯¯¯¯¯\
   /           \
 /               \
\                /
  \            /
    \ _______/
```

Now comes the tricky bit. Work out what the taper is. Say it goes from 45mm at the big end down to 35mm at the small end, over a length of 1m. That's 5mm off each side. So divide the length by 5 (200mm) and mark those positions with a pencil.

Set the depth of cut on your planer to 1mm and plane to the first pencil mark. Do this on all six sides.

Now take another pass as far as the second pencil mark, keeping the newly planed section flat (or at least as flat as it will go) on the table. The back end will be kicked up in the air a bit, this OK.
Repeat for each side and for each section. By the time you get to the end you will have planed 5mm off the front end.

You are planing against the grain here (assuming perfectly straight-grained timber), so you may want to leave a bit on for cleaning up. You can plane with the grain by dropping on, but that really needs support at the back end, and I'm not prepared to recommend it here!

Cheers
Steve


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## Mattty (19 May 2009)

Sorry chaps. Being the Muppet i am i said Hexagon in the original question which as John pointed out i meant Octagon. 

I haven't had chance today to work on the jig, but i think i've sussed it. If anyone has suggestions though please pitch in.

Matt


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## Steve Maskery (19 May 2009)

Have you any idea how long it took me to get those illustrations right with standard key strokes?????

Grrr! 
S


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## Mattty (19 May 2009)

Steve Maskery":1u18mvdy said:


> Have you any idea how long it took me to get those illustrations right with standard key strokes?????
> 
> Grrr!
> S



 Thanks Steve.

It's been stored for future use though :roll:


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## JohnBrown (19 May 2009)

I'd be interested to see what your solution looks like...


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## Night Train (21 May 2009)

I made this cabinet with tapered coopered doors.









The doors started off polygonal with flat staves that were planed round.

To work out the angles of the mitres on the staves I drew a template of the top edge of the doors and the bottom edge of the doors as circles around the same centre. I then drew radius lines to match the width of the stock I was using at the widest point, ie. the larger circle. Additional circles were drawn in to show the thickness of the stock. That gave me a plan view of the top and bottom of each stave.

I then took each stave and on an angled shooting board shot the ends so that they were parallel to each other and at the correct angle to the vertical.

I then transfered the radius lines from my template to the ends of my timber and this gave me the mitre for the top and bottom ends of each stave. I then joined the them up along the length of the timber and that determined the compound angle of the stave edge.

In your case for an octagon the radius lines will be 45deg apart. and much easier to draw out as you want to keep the octagon. The amount of taper you want can be determined by drawing it out to scale and measuring it or by using a bit of school trigonometry. Then you can do as I did above to mark out the compound angles of each piece.

Doh! Just re read your post. You want a solid leg not a hollow one!  


Get a squared length of timber stock a bit bigger then your required leg and a couple or so inches longer.

Make a template of the larger octagon with a centre hole and pin it to one end of the leg.

Make a centre hole at the other end of the leg.

Make a long, open top box to hold the leg on its centred ends so that it can spin in the box. The centres can be dowel, pointed bolts, screws etc.
The ends of the leg must be at the correct height from the open face of the box for the taper.

Make a slot in a flat board to allow a router to cut through it.

Mount the board over the box so that the router can cut away the leg to make one of the flat sides of the octagon the length of the leg.

Make sure that one end of the slot is able to rest on the octagon template on the end of the leg to index the leg for each face.

Rout out one face, remove or lift one end of the board and rotate the leg to the next flat, replace the board and rout again.

The end of the leg where then template is may not get fully routed but can be either sawn off or finished by hand to the template.

The template can be over size so that the end inch of the leg can be cut off leaving it the correct size.

If that isn't clear enough I will draw pictures tomorrow night (if I am awake enough)


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## woodbloke (22 May 2009)

In the last couple of issues of F&C there's been an ongoing article on the Barnsley 'shop where one of the lads is making a hexagonal (but it could be octagonal) table lamp which might be of interest - Rob


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