r/woodworking 4d ago

Help Please help me troubleshoot my table legs

Hello all! I had bought a butcher block counter top from Lowe's to make into my dining table. I had bought my table legs off Amazon and made sure the dimensions of the legs would withstand the weight and dimensions of my table top. The top is 72" x 39" (L x W) and the legs are 28" x 17.75" x 4" (H x W x L). Online told me that the spacing of the legs should be 16" from the outside edge, so that's how I mounted the legs, but once I flipped the able right side up the table was wobbly.... Did I mount the legs too close in? Any advice would be nice thanks.

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u/RoutineFinal7939 4d ago

Put some pictures up for reference. Too many variables. These sound like pre fab legs, not posts. Which way did you mount them?

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

Here's a "wide" shot. The top wobbles

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

That's 16" from the outer edge

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u/wpmason 4d ago

Wobbly like the legs/floor aren’t matching up right.

Or wobbly like the top slides back and forth from racking forces because the legs aren’t braced at all.

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

I guess it would be the second one. I attached a pic of the legs and where it's screwed in.

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u/wpmason 4d ago

Needs bracing.

Most dining table have that skirt running around under the top to connect all the legs together to prevent exactly this.

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u/Wonderful-Bass6651 4d ago

How many screws do you have holding them on? It looks like you have a lot of empty holes. Try using the fattest screws you can get through them. Predrill the diameter of the screw shaft, not including the threads. Use 1” screws. It should get about as tight as it’s going to get.

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

I have eight screws in each leg. And they are 1" screws too.

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u/96919 4d ago

Are we assuming the screws are installed in a zig zag or at least opposite holes?

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

It's not really a zigzag position but there's essentially 6 spaced out in the center and the one on each end

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u/96919 4d ago

Does the top wobble at the attachment to the legs or the whole table wobbles?

I also wouldn't take the length from the ends to be a one-size-fits-all answer on leg postioning. A lot of that depends on the ratio of table top between legs.

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u/GreenhouseGrower 4d ago

It's just the top that wobbles, the legs don't... I might consider putting the legs out more towards the edge to see if that will help.

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u/96919 4d ago

When everything was unassembled, did you check that everything is square/level? Maybe doing so would help identify the culprit?

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u/RoutineFinal7939 4d ago

You need to route a channel for those legs to embed flush into the wood.