design problem/question for a desk skirt
 

Hello,

I am designing a table (62'' long by 30'' wide) and I am wondering how to design the skirt knowing that I want the legs to be removable. Here is what I am thinking at for the moment:

(note, everything is tennons and mortised)



O------------------------------------O
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
O------------------------------------O


removable back to front part of the skirt with glued legs the leg are then tennons and mortised in the right to left part of the skirt and held with dowels
the 2 middle back to front part of the skirt (designed to hold the drawer) are tennons and mortised in the back and front part of the skirt

now the problem is how to attach the skirt to the table knowing that the table will expand and contract depending on the humidity?

I was thinking of fixing the back to front skirt parts in the middle of the table with lag bolts and add some L shaped wood peices bolted in the table to hold the skirt down, but allow movement as in the bellow ascii ART:

| |skirt
| |
| _| ___
| |_ |_ | Where that little L goes in the groove in the skirt
|___|__|_|______
| table
|__________________


does that look like a good design?

Thanks, Cyrille

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 15:59:10 GMT, Cyrille de Brébisson
wrote:

Hello,

I am designing a table (62'' long by 30'' wide) and I am wondering how to design the skirt knowing that I want the legs to be removable. Here is what I am thinking at for the moment:



You're overthinking this.

I built such a table for myself around a year ago. The apron is a
continuous frame. That isn't to say the aprons are a rectangle. They
are not. At each corner, the aprons come up to the legs, but are not
joined to the leg with anything. At each corner, there is a diagonal
part that goes from apron to apron. A screw extends from the leg to
that diagonal part. The screw has wood screw thread to go into the
leg, and machine screw thread to pass through the diagonal. This is
what allows the leg to be removed at your convenience.

That apron assembly is joined to the top with metal Z clips available
at Rockler or similar store.

In fact, the diagonal part mention above is also available as a metal
bracket that functions the same.

Take a careful look at the Rockler catalog (www.rockler.com) for table
hardware. It's all there.

There is no need to mortise and tenon the legs on such large table.