Woodworking

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Making strong "Z legs" for a table (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by Swaziboy@lemmy.world to c/woodworking@lemmy.ca

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Hey WW community. Exactly as the title says - I am making some work tables for my kids. They'll be used for homework, laptops, etc. And they're kids, so one can guarantee a little bit of abuse.

They're designing them, and the "z leg" is all the rage apparently - I am in the process of designing these in sketchup, and wanted to get some input/ideas on how to make these really strong. I obviously cannot make them out of a single piece of wood, so there will be some joins, probably on the apex points. Oh and the designs currently require the apex points of the Z to be rounded ....

I'm considering using half-lap bridle joints, making the Z's angular, then routing the curves into them.

Input, advice, links to designs welcome!

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[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I’m not sure about the dowels

The bridle joint will want to pivot and the desk acts as a big lever exerting a lot of force onto that joint with a large force multiplier.

It might be worth upgrading the dowels to steel bolts, but I don’t know a lot about the strength of wood under these forces.

If the dowel is 1” In and the Z is 48” long (no idea if that’s close), it exerts 48x the desk weight on to the dowels. You look at oak, a desk top of 50lb, a 1” dowel would be at over twice its breaking point. Two dowels and glue in the joint would will help, but steel bolts will have a much higher rating against shear here.

All of this is napkin math, and I’m not an expert at all here.

[–] Swaziboy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Your napkin math is good though. Excellent points thank you!