Original center leg

New center leg

Spider completely off the surface with new leg design

The hardest part of making the tarantula is drilling the dowel holes correctly in the 2 center legs. While redesigning the center two legs to make the finished spider stand up better, I decided to figure out an easier way to drill the dowel holes. While the front and rear legs fit into a drill press vise easy enough, and are fairly easy to drill, the holes in the center legs made it all but impossible to fit into the vise (or a hand clamp). After a few different ideas (and a few ruined legs) I came up with this idea.

After cutting the legs out and gluing on the small blocks at the base, glue the base end of 2 legs together.