I made a folding stool for a friend - they wanted something to reach tall cabinets in the kitchen, but they didn't want it to be on display all the time.
I didn't have a table saw or a planer / thicknesser at the time, so I milled all the parts for it by hand from this slab of oak:
Scrub plane, followed with a jack plane produced square-ish edges:
To speed things up, I used a circular saw, taking passes on both sides, flipping the slab around, slowly increasing cut depth. Once the cut depth was maxed out, I cleared out the middle with a hand saw. The boards were not nearly the same thickness, which caused some headaches with positioning the seat boards later, if I was doing it again, I'd make sure the parts are definitely the same.
After a bit more sawing and drilling, I ended up with the parts ready for assembly:
Two middle seat boards had some pretty dramatic grain, unfortunately it doesn't pop as much after applying varnish
This contraption helped me get the correct final widths for the seat boards:
I glued everything up, and then took it all apart to apply some varnish:
And this is the finished product:
It's not perfect, I definitely wouldn't chamfer seat boards on both sides again, difficult to get rid of squeezout after the glue up.
I'd make sure all parts are identical, and I'd probably make myself some alignment jig for the glue up, it was awkward
The 'client' loves it though, so that's all that matters
I would have the shelves filled with a mix of books, board games, plants and turned items.
