Thread: Can you believe that the four stools hold a five-ton truck?

Not really surprising; there's a straight, vertical line from the top to the bottom of the leg, so all the load is being directly transferred to the ground with little to no stress being applied to the joins. You could probably park the forklift on top of the car and still be fine.

There isn't a straight vertical line from the top to the bottom of the leg if you look at the picture closely. The legs angle out. I may have misunderstood what you meant though.

The legs angle out, but the bottom is still partially under the top, so there is still a straight line down

Cut because I missed the point

Sorry Elanjacobs I didn't see your post before I posted.

I see what you mean.

Like Cabriole legs (John Samuels explained this to me) there only has to be a line of wood somewhere from top to bottom even if it isn't the whole thing for the force to go straight down?

Essentially yes, but I would assume that as the load-bearing area (being the area at the bottom that is directly under the top) decreases, the load-bearing capacity decreases as well.

我拍了一张新照片

我拍了一张新照片。

demonstrates two things

1. well executed Mortise and tenon joints are strong

2. wood in compression is much stronger than people think.

A proper force analysis like they do when designing trusses will show different sections in compression vs tension. I suspect the compression forces are locking the bottom tenons into the mortises. The properties of the timber used would determine the holding capacity of the tenons which would be the weak point. They look like hardwood, I suspect a compressible soft wood would require gangnail plates over the joints to manage the same holding power.