Thread: A little stool for a little kid

It's not big stuff but it's not a box or a toy (although what isn't a toy to a kid) so I thought I would put this in here rather than general. A relatively simple build but read on if you want to shake your head at my self imposed problems.

I've made a number of things for my 4 year old but nothing for my 2 year old, so after a thoughtful moment, I decided on a stool. Because what else does a little boy need to weaponise and chase his sister with rest his weary legs (they're never weary). But he has started sitting down and pretending to read, so a little stool would be adorable.

And convniently I have some milled blackwood left over from the study revamp, I should probably update that thread. I wanted to do a somewhat low, squarish splayed leg stool, so the materials are meager, 4 legs and a seat. Ends squared off on the mitre saw and we're ready to go. I figured I'd knock this one out in a few hours (I figured wrong). Order of work was - drill the mortices for the legs, shape and fit the legs to the mortices, cut wedges for the legs, shape the seat, secure the legs, and then finish.


the pieces.jpg

I could have done the mortices for the legs on the drill press, but where is the fun in that? I try to use each project to learn something new and using a brace and bit would be the go here. Which is where the problems began. I used a triangular file to sharpen a Sotch pattern bit but fortunately had the sense to test on scrap first. The test piece cracked and the hole was a mess. I thought I would have issues just with the hole not being very clean as there are no spurs but the wood was cracking and ripping itself apart.

scotch pattern.jpg

Lesson for the day, after some research, the screw threads are far too coarse. The same bit worked in pine without cracking. Rummaging through the pile of second hand bits, I did find another 3/4" bit in the Jennings pattern, it was difficult to sharpen with a triangle file (I now own an auger bit file). It still gave a much nicer hole and no cracking.

jennings pattern.jpg

I didn't want to wait for the auger file to arrive and I didn't want to risk having another auger bit related problem so I created a guide with an Irwin Speedor bit and drilled out the holes using it. The guide slipped on the last hole (because of course it did) and I had some blowout when the seat lifted off the backer board. Good times, but the show must go on.

This is also when I realized why the seat timber was a good sized cut off. There were cracks on both ends that had started propagating.

the crack.jpg

A saner person would have chucked this piece of wood, with its misbored hole and cracks, but I thought it would add a nice little rustic touch to the splay stool to add some actually needed butterflies/bowties. Well maybe not strictly needed since I was going to use some medium CA glue as well, but I needed to redeem myself after my terrible inlay job on the study desk. Next question was huon pine or silver ash for the butterflies.

huon vs silver ash.jpg

Huon pine it was. Four butterflies, one on the left and three on the right. The lesson I learned from the study desk was not to have the waist of the butterfly narrower than my smallest chisel, it was super difficult to chisel out and I caused a lot of damage to the recess walls trying to extract the waste. The butterflies were cut on the bandsaw and then chiseled to the lines. Absolutely love chisel work on huon, it slices beautifully and leaves such a fantastic surface.

butterfly.jpg

The seat board got clamped and the butterfly locations marked out - a bit of double sided tape on the butterflies helps a lot here. Light pressure and going slowly with the marking knife several times gave a satisfactory result. The knife also got angles into the butterfly to try and undercut the piece, so the knife mark, if anything would be too tight. Then the recesses got chopped out. The smallest recess was the most painful one because I couldn't fit a router blade in the recess. So levelling the bottom was a case of chiselling with the bevel down until most of it was level.

clamped up.jpg

To keep the recess walls sharp, I made a second line with the chisel about 1-2mm away from the actual knife mark on each side, chopped out the waste and levelled the bottom with a little router. It's so tiny! The blade just fit on the smallest of the three right hand side recess.

little router.jpg

Once the bottom was flat, sharpened the widest chisel that would fit and pared back to the knife line in several steps. You can see the difference below between the left and right sides. You can also see the fuzzy bits on the top of the recess that gave me the only gap that I frowned at later. Apart from that one side, the walls were crispy.

butterfly recess.jpg

And I don't know why but I didn't take any photos of the butterflies glued into place. I did have to relieve the underside of the butterflies and tweak some of the recesses, but it was to be expected from the attempted undercutting in the marking out phase. It did give a nice result though (you can judge me later). Next task was the legs and again I took not one photo! But simple enough, mark the centre on each leg end grain, draw a 3/4" circle then use a spoke shave to trim the top third of each leg into something that looks like a dowel. Test into the mortice, note the bruising and keep shaving until the top of the leg protudes above the seat. Some minor shaping to the legs, but they are mostly keeping their squarish appearence. Finally orient the leg so the grain is perpendicular to the grain of the seat and then mark the cut line for the wedge on each leg. The wedge slits are easily done with a handsaw. Again, no photos!