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Forge Table – #2 Roughing out the legs

Today was (the first) leg day. I started with a 5 foot long piece of 8/4 ash that was about 7 inches wide.

First up was getting a square edge or two to work from, so I started by planing the straighter of the two narrow edges down using my #7 jointer. It doesn't get a lot of use, but it's sure handy for making things flat.

Ash board held in a face vise with a jointer plane sitting on it

Using that edge as a reference, I cut the end of the board square (it wasn't).

Board with a line marked on it to make a square end, and a saw

And then I measured 40 inches from that end, and struck another line across. I'm not sure if the legs will be the full 40 inches long, but that felt like a good height when I was playing around with things. There's a knot or two in the board that might convince me to make the legs 35 or 36 inches long, though.

board with a square sitting on it

With that done, I measured the width and planed the side opposite my reference face flat with the jointer, then I marked three lines dividing the board roughly into quarters. These would be just a bit under 1¾ inches wide, so with the 2 inch thick board, they'll be pretty close to square.

Some ripping and planing later (I used the circular saw to rip, but the blade won't quite cut all the way through the 2 inch thick board, so I had to finish with a handsaw), I had four roughly square and fairly straight pieces of ash which will become the legs for my table.

Four pieces of ash, roughly 2 inches square, and 40 inches long

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