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Cherry and ash stool

comments (4) January 13th, 2009 in Reader's Gallery

bob_ressel bob_ressel, member
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I teach high school woodworking. This stool project is centered around the use of jigs and fixtures to drill the holes in the seats and legs, machine the round tenons, and cut the four sided tapers on the legs.

posted in: Reader's Gallery, chair, cherry, ash
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Comments (4)

chuckster1 chuckster1 writes: Bob the stool are great. I have just finihed building my own three-legged stool that I found on the Web. it was a replicate of a stool made for mil;king cows. I found it exiting to make because it was my first project that I had completed in the first week of retirement. I ended up making four, one was for ourhouse, one for my daughtere and her husband whose child is our grandson, one for the other grandmother and on for a friend who works with my wife and who had a child the same time my grandson was born. I really like your stools and will build a number of them for my family but also to sell at crqaft fairs. Have any of your students or yourself sold them and if they have, what kind of a price did they get. The price to charge for crafts project is a problem for me. I fhave found that I at 65 and in a few months will be 66,I have to focus much more on layout and building. I have lost my sharpness of the mine. So to keep from making mistakes I have toi be very deliberate. So the time it takes is longer than most so I cannot price based on time spent on the project. After making a few the time improves a great deal but I still must focus more that I use to. I have also lost a lot of my temporary memory. ....Sorry fo rambling on here! IO just want to say that I was impress by your design and if by change as others have requested , if you have any drawings for your plans and jigs I to would be interested in receiving them. Your written directions are very helpful. I also am interested in making puzzles and just received a book I order last week that was written by James W. Follette. So I also was wondering if you have had any experience in making puzzles. I thought that maybe I could sell thos eat the craft fairs. Thanks Chuck Turner Knoxville, Tn. cturner44@yahoo.com
Posted: 10:57 am on January 29th

bob_ressel bob_ressel writes: I don't have any sketches or drawings of the stool or jigs, the design(s) just sort of evolved over 3 semesters. I started with the overall dimensions of Tage Frid's 3-legged stool from the Summer '77 issue of Fine Woodworking. I beefed up the dimensions of the legs and stretchers slightly, the first one I made looked a little weak in the undercarriage. The legs are 25 x 2 x 1 1/4 with a taper of 1/4" on each side. A 1" tenon is drilled about an inch deep on one end. The table of my drill press tilts over 90 degrees and a jig bolts to the table and holds the leg upright to drill the tenon. You could also turn them on the lathe. After that, the holes for the stretchers are drilled in the legs. The front leg holes are drilled at 12 degrees and the rear leg at 18 degrees. I have angled fixtures to do this but it could easily be done by tilting the drill press table. The stretcher stock is 13/16" x 1 1/8". The lengths are determined during assembly.

The seat finishes at 16 x 10 3/4 x 1 1/2 with a dish of 5/8". I have the students make two pieces 16 x 5 1/2 x 1 1/2, draw centerlines to determine the location of the holes, drill the holes (front - 12 degrees with a 6 degree rack, back - 18 degrees), bandsaw the curve on the underside, and glue the pieces together. The location of the holes and the outside curves were taken off of Frid's plan, I don't remember them offhand. I made a cradle jig for the drill press that holds the seat at 6 degrees, the drill press table is then tilted 12 degrees to the right and left for the holes.

I have a 20" bandsaw with a 13" resaw capacity so I cut the curve of the seat after it is glued together. If your bandsaw isn't that big, you could cut it prior to glue up. I'd leave a flat in the middle of the underside to help with alignment during glue up or insert 2 biscuits or dowels where they won't show. The length of the stretchers is determined after the legs are inserted into the seat holes and the shoulders of the tenons scribed and cut. Do the front stretcher first, then the back. The tenons are 1/2" round and I use the same jig as the leg tenons except with a spacer between the fence and the stretcher stock. The curves are shaped freehand on the belt sander and a roundover is machined on the router table. The legs have a roundover machined on the outside edges, as does the edges of the seats. If you were making a 32" tall bar stool, I'd decrease the splay of the leg angles by 2 degrees.

Hope this helps. I'll be demonstrating and building two more in the spring semester as I'll be teaching 2 upper level production courses. If I can get motivated enough, maybe I'll take pictures and submit an article to Fine Woodworking.
Posted: 3:28 pm on January 19th

rickrandom rickrandom writes: bob-great looking stool. Can you provide working drawings? I would like to build one for my other hobby, painting.

Posted: 9:40 pm on January 15th

Finally_A_Farm Finally_A_Farm writes: Can I get diagrams of jigs and fixtures to use? Just getting into some woodworking and I could use 3 nice stools for my kitchen island.
Posted: 3:36 pm on January 14th

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