More Than A Stool: Friday Update
I’ve been talking about it for weeks. A step stool. A simple tool to help my kids reach the sink.
This stool I spent way too much time on, but I have a good reason for that.
See I came up with a design for a console table nearly a year ago. I was happy with the design at the time but upon revisiting it the proportions looked off. I preferred the table with shorter legs, so I decided to play with the design in real life and make this stool with the same design.
Not only was this stool a design test, it was also a build challenge. I had to cut compound angles all over the place on this project, something I have only done one time before.
For those unfamiliar a compound angle is an angle on two planes from the face. Typically if you are making a frame you’ll cut one angle, a 45 degree, but the frame is still flat. In essence it’s all 2 dimensional work.
But take that 45 degree angle and cut it the normal way and at a bevel and the board now sits in three dimensions. Cut enough of these boards and you can make a pyramid.
While furniture making is the act of creating three dimensional objects, typically those objects are made of flat parts put together to create three dimensions. A box is simply six flat boards glued together.
But take the legs of this stool and set them at two different angles and the complexity increases, especially when using traditional mortise and tenon joinery where everything needs to fit precisely. Now throw an extra layer and make the legs connect in the middle and it’s hard to wrap your brain around how to make each cut.
Wanting more about the build process? A video is coming, also a full write up and some more progress pictures to explain how such a simple looking stool was very complex to make.
I found the way to work with weird angles is to reference what already exists, which is easily done with a bevel gauge, a tool which can be set to hold an angle. I kept the gauge handy at all times and used it to transfer angles to other pieces to establish how to make each cut.
The work didn’t happen over night. It’s been a struggle for the last few weeks which is way too long to work on such a small project, but I had a couple of vacations in there so I’ll give myself a break.
And now that the stool is done I’m especially excited about scaling up the project and turning it into a coffee table or bench. If you are interested in this design and want to have it in your home, send me a message and lets chat!