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I spent some time carefully sorting through the leg stock, picking which pieces show the nicest grain on the sides that will show. I also tried to match the color as well as I could. Once I settled on which leg would go where, I separated them out by table and stood them up as they would appear on the tables. Then I marked a square across the top to show the orientation. These marks help keep the pieces easily identifiable as to which face is inside. This is really helpful for the mortiser, which is the next step.

In my design, the front legs are different from the back (I will use top and bottom drawer support pieces instead of a face panel with the drawer cut out).

As a result I needed to put 3/8″ double mortises in the inside faces of the two front legs of each table, instead of the long mortise. So to keep those front faces separate I marked them with a double line, as you can see in the photo at right.

All seemed to be going just fine, until I noticed that I did THIS on one of the front legs:

Well, I wasn’t too happy to see that. I thought about making another leg… but I would have to match the color again and break up another piece of 8/4 stock, and I didn’t want to do that. So I decided to plug it. I just selected a piece of cherry from a scrap that had similar overall color, and I cut it so it almost fit in the mortise – just a half-hair over width. Then I shaved down both faces with a block plane so it made a slight wedge shape, glued it up and drove it in (carefully). The grain is a slightly different angle, but I think you’d really have to know it’s there to even notice it.I think it turned out OK:

I sawed up the front drawer stock so the top and bottom support pieces will be from the same board as the drawer front. The grain matches too, but it will really be hard to tell that since these are such small pieces. I laminated these support pieces to some scrap maple & oak, to build it up to 1¼” wide. Then I completed the joinery for the front legs, including the double M&T joints and the dovetail joints. These pics just show how cutting a little notch in the bottom of the dovetailed end can help hold the stock in place to make marking the leg a lot easier and more accurate.

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