A have some tapered cherry table legs that need to be thicknessed from
2" sq to 1.5"sq at the tops. The legs are alredy tapered to 1.5" (which needs to come down to 1.25") on two adjacent sides starting 4.5" down from the top.I know I can do this on my table saw with my jig, but Isomeone mentioned to me that running them through a thickness planer will maintain the taper. Is this true?
Lou
The problem seems to be that you are changing the amount of taper. Right now there is 0.5" of taper over the whole length, going from 2.0" to 1.5". When you get done you want to have 0.25" of taper over the length, going from
1.5" to 1.25". If you were maintaining the same taper I could see building a sled to hold the legs, tapered side down as it ran under the planer's knives as you removed 0.5" in multiple passes but that would result in the bottoms being reduced to 1.0".Jointer will do it. Elevate the outfeed above the knives to cut tapers.
You'd have to jig a thickness planer. Too much effort, given that you'd not notice minor deviations from leg to leg.
Dare I point out that you are _not_ 'mantaining' the taper?
If you're taking 1/2" off at the top, then taking only 1/4" off at the bottom, requires a _different_ taper.
Regardless, it's d*mn difficult to do something like that with a thickness planer. However, with a -jointer-, it is possible. Quality of results is not necessarily predictable -- depends greatly on the jointer and the skill of the operator.
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