Reed writes:
I want to follow up on the question that I posed to the Groop
about extending the carved legs on a very large dining room table.
Many recomended adding the extension to the top of the leg,
and that usually is a good place to hide and extension,
but here, the architecture of the leg, the way it was carved,
would not allow an exension there.
Another mention was to place spacers between the leg board that
connected two legs together and the table top above. That will not
work here because the massive extension slides that allow the
table to be cranked out to 14 feet are the FULL depth of the apron.
The leg board attaches dirctly to the extension slides.
Extra blocking here would put the leg board too low
and it would become a knee problem.
Don W's statement about the casters being worn out
and needing to be replaced with new, tight casters
made me go out to the shop and check those.
Here is what I found.
1 caster was mis-matched from the others, it had a worn wood wheel,
the cast iron cup was missing and some sort of spring metal friction
device was attempting to hold the castor in the leg.
Pick up the table and that castor stayed on the floor.
1 caster's cast iron cup or receiver was broken and the bore
in the leg was oversized allowing the castor to wobble.
2 casters were simply worn out, as Don suggested.
The axle-wheel area is worn and the wheels are loose.
I explained to the client the above and recomended new casters,
but they were set in their mind that that would not solve the problem.
So I borrowed a truncated cone design from the foot of the leg
and made a set of short legs to replace the casters.
I put brass threaded inserts in them and
screwed in some steel glides.
I also bored out the cup holes to .875"
and turned a matching tenon on the new foot.
The clients inspected it today and are happy,
it was just what they wanted.
Thanks for the help, Groop.
Reed -I think new casters would have looked better- Spaulding
Sking in Northern NH
