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Comment by jcims

2 years ago

Somehow as easy as it is conceptually, I still find cutting 3 stringers that line up well to be surprisingly difficult. In part because I’ve only has to do it a handful of times in my life.

Either you use jigs or you tie them together temporarily and cut the stack.

  • Yup. If you're doing almost anything in wood, a set of clamps is more useful than you'd think.

    I made a table. The legs are all exactly the same length, but don't ask me what that exact length is - I eyeballed the height I wanted and then clamped all the legs together before cutting them.

    Another tip for building things with legs - a 3-legged object is stable on any uneven surface while a 4-legged objects will wobble on uneven surfaces.

    This is because 3 points make a plane, adding a 4th point that is not on that plane introduces a wobble.

    • Easiest way to avoid that wobble: get the legs to within 1 mm, add felt pad to the bottom of the legs. The pressure of the table will compress the felt and all four legs now contact the ground.

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  • pretty amazing how the simplest of solutions seems to be so elusive. i've been guilty on more than one occassion of making something seemingly simple as difficult as wrangling cats.

    • It's just experience. Everything you've done before or that you've seen done by people that knew what they were doing is trivial, everything you haven't done before is difficult.

A sister comment to mine gives you one strategy, but you can also use the first stringer as a template to the rest.