Sanding feet (the furniture kind)

[mac sparrow]

Share with me your thoughts please.

I have some feet I made using some dowel.  I cut the feet using a cheap mitre saw and there are height differences in the feet, very small but still..............I have spent ages sanding them manually but just can't get them straight or all matching.

I've been looking at disc sanders to rectify the issue but I'm just wondering what other people do when making feet for furniture.  I feel I would use a disc sander more but having read a lot online about them the opinions are very mixed.

 

[nclemmons]

Is it a finished piece of furniture?  If so, I have had luck doing this...  Cut four 4" x 4" plywood blocks.  Place three blocks under three legs.  Lay the fourth block on the floor and use a Japanese saw with a pull stroke to mark the fourth leg.  Then sand or cut to that mark.  The block and saw let you make marks around the leg foot for uniform shortening.

On the subject of a disc sander, I have a 12" unit and it works great if you can clamp and index the piece.  Can you attach the feet to a makeshift right angle holder and put a stop on the bottom to index the consistent depth from the front of the disk table?  Idea is to plunge to a consistent depth into the sanding disc.

If you have a miter saw with sufficient depth you might be able to do it with a cross cut held and clamped as suggested with the disc sander.

Neil

 

[mac sparrow]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the reply.  The piece is unfinished and is pretty small.  I thought it would be a quick task, cut some legs/feet for it using a mitre saw but can't for the life of me cut 4 pieces the exact same size.  I even resorted to trying to cut the dowelling using a manual saw, needless to saw I cut squint.  Maybe I just need to be sensible and buy 4 lengths of the doweling and cut all 4 together in the mitre, whereas at the moment I'm measuring the legs/feet on one piece of dowelling and making 4 separate cuts.  Between human error, tool inaccuracy and width of cutting blade, the error could be happening from one or many of those areas.

Thanks again

 

[David Gibson]

Gang cutting seems the most logical choice. Holding them all straight is key . Good luck

DWG

 

[mouppe]

Here's what I do for tables, cabinets and anything with feet or legs.

1. Level the piece with shims.
2. Drill a scrap piece of wood with one flat face with a hole that can take a pencil.
3. With the flat face of the scrap wood on the benchtop and the pencil sticking out, mark each side of the feet.
4. Cut the excess off the feet along the pencil marks.

You'll end up with a level and plumb result and your feet bottoms will be parallel to the floor.

If you try to fix one leg at a time independently, you'll go round and round in circles till your piece is legless!