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looking for wood claw feet for chairs

cloudbound

By cloudbound
in General Mini Talk

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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I'm looking for some claw-foot legs for chairs.  I've seen the typical cabriole legs on different sites but I'm looking for nice carved claw feet legs.  Any ideas?  I've tried doing a little carving to the cabriole legs but I'd really rather have the real thing....  Thanks

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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Thank you for that Holly.  I just sent an e-mail and I'll let you know if I hear back.  I actually had four really lovely ones but I just used them on a chair and I want to replace them.  

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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Well Holly that is exactly what I think I'll have to do.  I saw two claw foot legs for sale on eBay for about $7 but the shipping (from Australia) was going to be $20.  So today I invested in some tinier Xacto blades but I didn't even think of buying tiny files.  Grr...  I did try with the cabriole legs before but I was using a tiny sanding wheel and although the feet look nice, they are NOT 'claw feet'.  I just made a black Chinese Dragon Chair (1:12 scale) like the one I have in my living room that was my mother's.  And the 4 claw feet I had on hand worked so perfectly for that chair. But those were the only ones I had and I want to replace them.  So tiny file enh?  What a great idea!

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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Again - thank you Holly!  There's a Harbor Freight just a short distance.  Its where I got my trusty mini rotary tool (for only $9) and the teeny precision drill bits (for about $10).  I use my rotary tool for so many things and it's worked like a charm for a couple of years now.  

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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I found a set of needle files for just $4 at Harbor Freight Tools and they'll be fun to experiment with.  I wish I could load a photo of the finished Dragon Chair I made but I'm told I can only load about 10 kb.  I can't figure out how to reduce my photo size to that.  But it did turn out nice.  thanks for you help again Holly.

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Sable

Sable

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14 minutes ago, cloudbound said:

I found a set of needle files for just $4 at Harbor Freight Tools and they'll be fun to experiment with.  I wish I could load a photo of the finished Dragon Chair I made but I'm told I can only load about 10 kb.  I can't figure out how to reduce my photo size to that.  But it did turn out nice.  thanks for you help again Holly.

You've probably exceed your "attachments" limit. Go to "My attachments" and delete old photos.

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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Here're my first few attempts at carving the claw legs for chairs.  I printed out Ferd Sobol's blog showing the steps he takes to carve the legs.  This is using an Xacto knife mostly but I used the tiny sanding drill bit with my mini rotary tool plus the one of the small carbide tip bits too.  The first two tried came out too fat and chunky looking.  The next two tries were getting better.  And the last is still getting better but not as delicate as Ferd's.  Oh - I also watched a long video this morning by Mary May, a wood worker who makes regular carved legs for tables.  She was showing how to carve acanthus leaves in 3-D onto the knee of the leg.  Now I'm looking forward to trying one more time.  

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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  The joke's on me - I found the identical set of carved wood chair legs on Etsy for only $4.50 for the set and only $4.50 for shipping.  Ha, ha.  Its the same person who's selling them on eBay for $7.50 a set.  Plus I asked the Ebay seller why the high shipping charge ($17) and she wrote back thanking me for pointing it out and reduced the shipping charge to something like $4.50.  Even though I've been experimenting, trying to carve my own (I have OODLES of scrap wood here) I may get a few sets of those.  

  Here's my latest set of carved legs (with the acanthus leaves on the shoulder).  My eyes were going wonky and I had to wait another day to try adding the ball & claw feet.  

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cloudbound

cloudbound

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  I'm always SO surprised when the wood carving works out.  As you can see from the first two sets I didn't really know what I was doing.  The video I watched online by Mary May was LONG but so interesting and she talks about working WITH the grain of the wood, plus shading with the deeper cuts.  I'll watch that video again!  She was using the acanthus leaves in her demonstration.  

  And by the way - thank you for the compliments.  Its so nice of you fellow mini lovers to appreciate seeing the work.  Or should I say 'the play' that goes into some of our creations.  

 

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