When I made my son’s table a couple of years ago, I had one rule that I followed regarding how it was to be built: Keep it simple since it is a child’s work table. It should not be made of expensive materials, and it should be, to the best of my ability, repairable should something happen. After all, kids tend to be a bit rough on their things.
The material I used was poplar – check on the inexpensive material. The joinery I chose to use to join the table legs to the apron was pocket holes and screws. Yes, some folks poo poo the idea of using pocket hole joinery as a “true” joinery method to be used in fine furniture, but, I never claimed this piece was fine furniture.
It is though, a functional furniture piece.
My son was playing one day and got a little rambunctious, and then fell into the table, splitting one of the table legs. He was fine, pretty annoyed, but carried on.
This is one reason I chose pocket holes to join the legs into the apron – it was this scenario, along with the reason that should the table last into his adolecent years and beyond, I could easily replace the legs.
So that’s what I did here. I prepared a new leg, same as the others.
Once ready, I simply removed the pocket screws, removed the old leg, and then placed the new leg in position and rescrewed into place. Repair complete.
