More than 4 legs needed for this table?
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I’m building a black walnut dining room table, shaker style, the dimensions of which are 88″ x 40″ x 30″. Table top and aprons are 5/4 thick. Legs are 1 3/4″ tapered down to 1″. The legs will be mortised to the aprons using double 10 mm x 50 mm Dominos. Also, the legs will be stabilized/anchored to the aprons with 1 3/4″ x 6″ x 6″ brackets. Are 4 legs adequate to support the weight the table given the above dimensions? Any help/advice would be appreciated.
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In my opinion those are some pretty spindly legs for a table of that size and I feel will be fairly wobbly regardless of an interim leg. It also may also not be pleasing aesthetically if the legs appear to be too weak, but that can be subjective.
Support the weight, yes. The table will stand. I agree with Esch that they are kinda light in scale. 1.75" feels more like a coffee table leg. I think dinner around that table will be a bit sporty.
Do a scaled drawing, mock it up in scrap, make sure you like it.
You'll find a number of commercial Shaker-style sellers advertising tables of that design and dimensions. As others note, they all look too spindly and likely to give in to various kinds of forces.
The Shakers themselves certainly made big/long dining tables but tended to move to the pedestal styles as the size / number of seats-per-table increased. These have a long reinforcing bar under the table top and much thicker legs albeit only two of them.
A four-legged table of the size and dimensions you want to make seems likely to develop a bow in the top & long aprons; and, if dragged, a racked fracture or break of the apron-to-leg joints. If Big Uncle Herb sits down heavily on the table itself, it might also emit a complaint in the form of a groan-crack!
Frankly, when scaled to that size, it looks more like a decorative than a functional object.
Lataxe
If I did the arithmetic properly, your top is going to weigh about 100 lbs. Personally, I would ask what sort of apron/leg structure I need to hold 100+ lbs and be able to stand a certain amount of stress in all directions (from moving it, from people bumping into it, etc.)? I agree with others about the aesthetics of such thin legs and I'm not sure your brackets will compensate for that. But it feels like you need at least 2" thick legs to me. Another possibility is that you keep the upper part of the leg that attaches to the aprons (say the first 4-6 inches) thick (3 x3 or 4x4) and then transition to a thinner or tapered lower portion. In effect, you're substituting a thicker upper leg for a bracket.
If you're stuck on the thin legs, maybe you want to consider a tortion box construction for the top, which would reduce the weight and make it stiffer, less likely to sag. I've never made one, but people seem to swear by that method.
As others have mentioned, I’d be concerned about racking forces which may well exceed direct gravity loads. How deep are your aprons?
I have a profound dislike of tables with more than four legs. They are just inconvenient and look wrong.
You can of course support that table on four legs, especially with nice chunky aprons. I'm also not convinced that racking will be as much of a problem as others have suggested, especially if your aprons are nice and wide at the legs, but I do agree that they will not look right.