A couple years ago I built a chair and ottoman, but it turned out the ottoman had a design flaw. Picture for reference:
At the time, I thought it was a good idea to splay the legs out 15 degrees past 90 to complement the angled legs on the chair. In reality, it meant that the legs got kicked occasionally by people walking by, which resulted in 3 of them getting kicked off.
All of them broke right at the top of the tenon, due to insufficient long grain at the joint because of the curve. But even if they hadn't broken, it's probably not a great idea to have a piece of furniture that is constantly tripping people.
As a quick fix, I drilled a couple holes into the legs and added screws to keep them on, then glued in dowels. It didn't look great, but was functional. After the third leg got broken, I decided to stop avoiding the inevitable and started a redesign to fix things.
I wanted to keep the center portion, so I started by sawing off the side supports on the table saw.
This worked out well and would save me time for the rebuild.
This time I decided on a bridle joint with legs connected at a 90 degree angle. My dado set wouldn't go high enough to get the full depth required, so I had about a quarter inch of the tenon sticking out.
I trimmed that bit off and then I had joints that were flush.
Next I drew up curves on the legs until I settled on something I liked.
After cutting out on the bandsaw, I sanded up the curves, and here's the resulting profile.
Next I did the same process for the remaining pieces and labeled the joints so I wouldn't mix them up.
Then I glued them up and clamped them for about an hour to let the glue set.
Then I temporarily clamped them to the center piece to make sure I liked the look.
After that I rounded over the edges and sanded them, then did another temporary clamp to get another visual of the final product.
Next I glued and screwed them in place.
Here it is pre-finish:
And then after applying teak oil:
I put the cushion back on and put it back next to the chair. It's been about 2.5 years since I rebuilt it and no one has kicked it, so it seems to be working out.
