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Some woodworkers taper legs at a band saw or at a table saw, we show you how to use a jointer and accomplish the task with two passes over the knives. There’s minimal setup at the tool. You’re tapering on no time and the process is repeatable with any number of legs.
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I know that you like doing tapers this way Glen but I’ll tell you that I still like cutting them on my tablesaw jig I made that runs in the miter slot and I just plane out the saw marks and it is alot safer.
Looks dangerous to me especially if the legs are longer or fatter so heavier.
This is a great method for making tapered legs. I had never made tapered legs before, but just two days ago, I needed to make nine of them, tapered on all four sides. (Nine legs? They are for a drying shelf for boots that wraps around my radiator.) I have several of Glen’s instructional DVDs (from Woodworker’s Edge) and he explains the method in the first one, although his explanation here is a little more comprehensive. It works like a charm, leaving the legs very smooth and only in need of a light final sanding. (I used cherry.) One thing that would improve this technique would be for you, Glen, to design and fabricate a push stick that is dedicated to this method. I found pushing the legs through on the final pass to cause some anguish, which is amplified some by my being left handed. It gets a little more tricky on the third and fourth sides, since the taper on the first two causes a loss of support against the jointer fence. But this technique definitely is superior to using a bandsaw and handplane.