Making Your Linnaea Dresser Be All It Can Be

I'm working on the pedestals for the Linnaea cabinets. We have been making decisions on the size of it, and it has been growing progressively. Seems like each time we work with it, the pedestal grows about 1/2".

The pedestal has legs that are set at angles to the case. The legs are actually 5-sided, with a beveled interior area for the skirts to connect. They are 8" high, and step out about 3 1/2" in two directions. This is fairly involved as far as pedestals go.

The concern over structure here is pretty big. Many people are not kind to their furnishings, myself included, and I have a genuine concern of these legs getting sheared off from the piece, getting dragged, hit with large objects, dropped, etc. I'm always thinking of the worst case scenario when I design and build furniture. We originally were going to use a metal corner bracket to help support the joint. We found that the screw needed to provide the majority of the strength would need to run through the intersection of the two skirts, and would actually diminish the joint's integrity by possibly fracturing the glued joint. If you have ever run a screw into a piece of wood and had the wood split, imagine running a screw into the intersection of three pieces of wood. Hard to imagine a good outcome here.

We decided that best approach to the problem was to do what they would have done in 1960, a good old-fashioned corner block that was glued and screwed to the skirts. You can see the difference between the metal corner bracket and the corner block in the photo. The effect is that the skirts become much more rigid, and thereby don't allow any flex in the leg joint. The real test will be when I stand on top of the chest to "stress test" the pedestal. I'll keep you posted.