(Received this from Steve Promo on 3 July while I was traveling to a wedding.  Another great project made to look easy. - ajp2)

I was recently asked to turn four legs for a large, thick,  antique maple butcher block.  The client wanted to repurpose it as an island in her kitchen and desired it to match her countertop height of 36.”  This required adding 4” to the height of the old legs which were ash painted black.  I drew two options to scale,  labeled A and B,  with the old leg in the middle.  

 

The client chose leg design “'A" and provided me with S2S hard maple boards from Bell Forest Products in Ishpeming (UP).  I joined, surfaced and stack laminated them.  After the glue dried, I re-joined two adjacent surfaces, and thickness planed them into very straight and very square 4 x 4 x 25” blanks.  

 

Customer supplied hard maple boards.

 

 

Glued up Boards

After center punching ends, I started the lathe and ran it up to about 1200 rpm as seemed about right given their 30 pound weight and length.  

 

First leg mounted with markings.

 

After turning the first one, I placed it into a holder a few inches behind the lathe spindle.  This really helped with visual checks comparing the curves, beads, tapers, etc of the leg being turned to the finished leg behind it.

  

 

first leg mounted on back of lathe.

 

View from long tool rest of first leg behind the one on the lathe.

Another great help was making a 36” toolrest with dual bases.  The rest was made from a salvaged wear plate from the leading edge of a highway snowplow.  The bases were metal tubing salvaged from a treadmill frame and some 1” rod and set screw collars made on my metal lathe.  The wear plate steel is very stiff, hard, and wear resistant, plus it is thick, and fairly wide.  Super nice to run your fingers along and it yielded a great place to indicate the location of spindle features  IE/beads, etc with a SHARPIE.   

 

One of two toolrest mounts

 (Steve does not say how long it took him to make the toolrest and mounts. - ajp2)

Each one took me about an hour to turn and was sanded once with 120 grit.  I worked slowly and carefully as I only had four blanks, no extras!  ;) : )   A large roughing gouge and 3 skews of various sizes were very helpful on this project.  I also used a parting tool and five different calipers to establish diameters at various places.  A piece of baling wire was used to burn lines above and below each bead. They weigh about 20 pounds each after turning.

 

Finished legs for Butcher Block.

 

I will suggest a Danish Oil finish as (I feel) it would be a real shame to paint such beautiful clear hard maple.  

Steve Promo