Roll Top Secretaries Desk - Day 1 - The Legs

I’m starting a new project that I’ve been promising my wife since Christmas. It’s a small roll top desk for the corner of our family room so my wife can do some light paper work without having to go off and lock herself away in the office. It’s a small version of a roll top desk, you will have to wait and see what it looks like in the end because the plan is sitting between my ears at the moment. The desk is solid oak with the exception of the desk top that is oak ply with solid oak edge trim.

I’m doing a few things I’ve not previously attempted with this project. One is tapered legs. Gasp you say … he’s never done a tapered leg. Yep it’s true. I’ve turned legs, cabriolet legs and many others but never a plain old taper. My big issue here was to build a jig that was simple, cheap and reliable. I’ve been looking at taper jigs plans that were more complex than the entire desk project. Not for me I’m afraid I want something dead simple. Here is what I came up with.

That’s the jig, a 1/4 ply base with a straight fence that has a screw in one end. Yup you read that right, a screw in one end.

Here is what it looks like with one of the legs. You can see that all the screw does is to hold the bottom end of the leg out a fixed distance relative to the top … the result is a tapered cut.

At the end of this phase I have four legs all cut, milled, mortised and tapered. The oak ply top is cut to size as well as strips of 1” x 1” oak to trim out the edges of the ply top.

By the way, yes I am wearing a kilt. You have heard of the Utilikilt I haven’t you. The last woodworking show I went to I saw over a dozen guys wearing them, including one of the Lee Valley guys. They have ones specifically for wearing in the workshop and the things are the most blastedly comfortable garments ever, pockets that can hold ALL your junk, even your favorite beverage and on top of that they are practically indestructible!

-- Jim in Langley BC Canada --- www.sollows.ca