I have some Ash that I was to use to make a workshop stool, but as I have no experience with chair/stool making I decided to make an (overly elaborate) prototype from baltic birch.
I immediately fell into a trap of creativity with complexity that couldn't possibly be part of the future final stool. I liked the idea of the plywood pattern on all 4 faces of the legs, which involved planing off 1 veneer, gluing up pieces to make double thickness (~1.5 inch) stock and then cutting legs from each. I'm quite pleased with it from a creative standpoint, but I could have been finished weeks ago so
.
I wanted to try out a brace design that I have in mind for the ash stool. For once I managed to contain my urge to overcomplicated the joint and it went together nice and easy with butt joints and through dowels. The roundover bit on the router table wouldn't reach into all the corners, but some hand tool work with a file sorted those out quickly.
I don't have any shorts of forming the tenons on the legs unfortunately. I pondered how to achieve that without a lathe and eventually found that a 10mm round over bit did a decent job. Time for a dry fit, and this is where life became a bit tedious and I felt like I was likely to screw up the project. The brace detail meant I had to decide between rotating the legs slightly so that the brace pieces would sit flush with the legs, or angling the joint. I went for rotating the legs which I think was the correct aesthetic, but was a pain in the ass to get them to the right angle all the way around. Of course every time I needed to remove the legs, I'd screw up the angle. The mortice and tenons were very snug too, which meant pounding them in with a mallet (which does not aid precision). I did find though that by twisting the legs as I hit them with the mallet, I could tune them in very easily, which at least meant I didn't need to take the legs out entirely to reposition them.
Annoyingly I discovered that once I'd cut the slots for wedges, this loosened up the joint such that inserting the legs could be done very easily by hand and tuning the angle was just a matter of twisting
. Oh well, that's a lesson to file away.
Time for glue up, more butt joints and through dowels for the braces. This went better than expected, although one joint ended up a little opened up. Plenty strong with the dowel though I think.
After glue up, a final sanding and on to finish. I was eager to be done, so a couple of coats of blonde shellac with a quick sand was the chosen finish. It does bring out the less noticeable grain details nicely in the birch veneer.
...and it's done!
I'm relatively happy with the design. I didn't want to shape the seat because the nature of a shop stool is that it gets grabbed without looking and I didn't want to have to worry about which direction it's facing. I would probably round the seat corners considerably more, and I had intended to curve the edges (somewhat like a plectrum), so that will happen in the ash version.
The legs..... oh the legs
. There is considerably too much twist. It doesn't feel like I'm likely to break it, but when sitting on it and twisting, the seat will move a fair amount. I suspect that this is a combination of leg thickness, and material (I'd like to hear opinions on this please). Possibly the rake (is that the correct term for the angle?) of the legs is a little too acute also.
The leg brace does not function as a foot rest very well, it would be considerably more comfortable to just have braces directly between each leg. I think in terms of design, I would make the overlap much tighter, so that the triangle in the middle is much smaller, but I need to consider whether the function of the foot rest is more important than the aesthetic (probably).
I immediately fell into a trap of creativity with complexity that couldn't possibly be part of the future final stool. I liked the idea of the plywood pattern on all 4 faces of the legs, which involved planing off 1 veneer, gluing up pieces to make double thickness (~1.5 inch) stock and then cutting legs from each. I'm quite pleased with it from a creative standpoint, but I could have been finished weeks ago so
.I wanted to try out a brace design that I have in mind for the ash stool. For once I managed to contain my urge to overcomplicated the joint and it went together nice and easy with butt joints and through dowels. The roundover bit on the router table wouldn't reach into all the corners, but some hand tool work with a file sorted those out quickly.
I don't have any shorts of forming the tenons on the legs unfortunately. I pondered how to achieve that without a lathe and eventually found that a 10mm round over bit did a decent job. Time for a dry fit, and this is where life became a bit tedious and I felt like I was likely to screw up the project. The brace detail meant I had to decide between rotating the legs slightly so that the brace pieces would sit flush with the legs, or angling the joint. I went for rotating the legs which I think was the correct aesthetic, but was a pain in the ass to get them to the right angle all the way around. Of course every time I needed to remove the legs, I'd screw up the angle. The mortice and tenons were very snug too, which meant pounding them in with a mallet (which does not aid precision). I did find though that by twisting the legs as I hit them with the mallet, I could tune them in very easily, which at least meant I didn't need to take the legs out entirely to reposition them.
Annoyingly I discovered that once I'd cut the slots for wedges, this loosened up the joint such that inserting the legs could be done very easily by hand and tuning the angle was just a matter of twisting
. Oh well, that's a lesson to file away.
Time for glue up, more butt joints and through dowels for the braces. This went better than expected, although one joint ended up a little opened up. Plenty strong with the dowel though I think.
After glue up, a final sanding and on to finish. I was eager to be done, so a couple of coats of blonde shellac with a quick sand was the chosen finish. It does bring out the less noticeable grain details nicely in the birch veneer.
...and it's done!
I'm relatively happy with the design. I didn't want to shape the seat because the nature of a shop stool is that it gets grabbed without looking and I didn't want to have to worry about which direction it's facing. I would probably round the seat corners considerably more, and I had intended to curve the edges (somewhat like a plectrum), so that will happen in the ash version.
The legs..... oh the legs
. There is considerably too much twist. It doesn't feel like I'm likely to break it, but when sitting on it and twisting, the seat will move a fair amount. I suspect that this is a combination of leg thickness, and material (I'd like to hear opinions on this please). Possibly the rake (is that the correct term for the angle?) of the legs is a little too acute also.The leg brace does not function as a foot rest very well, it would be considerably more comfortable to just have braces directly between each leg. I think in terms of design, I would make the overlap much tighter, so that the triangle in the middle is much smaller, but I need to consider whether the function of the foot rest is more important than the aesthetic (probably).
