Monday, July 27, 2015

Progress on Four-legged Three-legged Stool

After much more time and energy than I care to admit, I'm making good progress on the two cherry stools. These are my four-legged version of the Tage Frid three-legged stool design. I'm working on milling wood for all the parts (which is challenging because the humidity is making them move all over the place), but the biggest achievement so far is the progress I've made with the seat connector piece. This little 4" by 5" chunk does the work of keeping the whole stool together. (By the way, when does a stool become a chair? This is going to have four legs, so maybe it deserves chair status.)




This piece joins the front part of the seat to the seat back but also connects to the back legs. That's more action per square inch than any other part of the chair. So here's the rundown on what I've done to the connector so far:

Made a blank out of plywood (3/16" thick pieces of cherry laminated in perpendicular layers)
Straightened it up and cut it down to size
Cut a 4" wide tenon to fit the mortise in the front of the seat
Cut a 75 degree angle on the back

Next up:
Cutting angled dovetails to join the seat back
Cutting an angle on the underside to join the seat
Cutting 13 degree bevels on both sides
Cutting slots to fit dovetails on the two back legs

This is a lot of stuff, especially since two of the upcoming tasks require making jigs that work just fine in my head but haven't been attempted in the real world. And after all this, I have to make the rest of the stools (I mean chairs).


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