German bench dogs: Making a tapered chair leg
One more about those German bench hooks. But first, some blog house-keeping. This is the 10th post on my new blog. At the beginning of June in the first post I said there would be 10 free posts so people who were unfamiliar with my work could see what it’s all about. So after this one, most of the posts will only go out to paid subscribers. There will still be some shorter posts viewable to all - and I’ll copy those over on my old blog too. That blog has over 1,500 posts, so there’s plenty of free content to explore. I still read some of those old posts!
All right - onto the bench hooks. I shot a video of using it this morning. It works very well and I’m sure with a little more practice it can become a useful setup. I took a riven piece of red oak and hewed it to a rough square cross-section. Then punched each end with a center punch. Next time, I’d scribe a circle on those ends aiming for my desired size chair-leg or what-have-you. Just to have a target size when trimming down the stock.
The video shows the whole thing - it’s just under 9 minutes. Thanks for watching.
Thanks Peter. My back dislikes being hunched over the bench these days, and this gets the work up higher, among other things. I can see this being useful for cabriole legs, too.
I'm really enjoying your Substack, Peter. Your work is just stunning. Today, I'm trying to figure out how I can fix these German dogs somehow onto a sash cramp placed in a face vice, since I don't have a tail vice. I was trying this out this morning, ineptly, when a magpie strutted up to the workshop door and cackled at me.