Folding Stool 2A Prototype

This walk-through was made while completing three of these stools for friends. I had hoped that doing them batch fashion would result in some efficiencies. That didn't seem to happen. Part of that might be due to my rather chopped up shop time and lack of excitement for making stools #5, #6 and #7.

That said, it doesn't take that long to make one, I just have a long list of things I'd like make and things that need to be done around the house. These took me 4-5 hours each. Finishing and final assembly was about half of that. It's really hard to put finish on an assembled stool. You really need to do it as you go. I'll cover that in more depth in the finishing section.

That total could be shortened considerably if you are less fussy than I am about your finished product. You could do a "munitions grade/basketman" level of stool in about 2 hours. But that's not how I make things, so follow along if you want a nice stool that will last a couple of hundred years if you're careful.

A note about measurements: pre-industrial furniture didn't follow carefully measured plans. there are parts that are important and those were laid out with care. Everything else was cut to fit. For this chair, the critical part is the layout of the holes for the folding mechanism. Other than that, there's room in almost every other measurement. If your legs turn out 24" instead of the specified 23½", it's fine, really.

Preparing the Stock

Your wood of choice is a clear hardwood. I recommend oak, it's cheap and more than strong enough. But feel free to use whatever you have to hand, this doesn't take a lot, about 4 board feet.

Everything is cut from ¾" thick stock and all parts are 1½" wide. You can either mill this down from 4/4 rough stock, or, if you're wealthy, you could buy 2S2 red oak from Home Depot or similar.

You'll need 31 linear feet of ¾" x 1½" stock cut like this:

• 8 Legs @ 23½" 192
• 4 Feet/Arms @ 15" 60
• 8 Seat boards @ 14" 120

My recommendation is to cut all your stock to width first, then cut things to length as you need them. It's important that all seat and leg parts be the same width if you want this to fold. Have a couple of extra pieces so when you mess something up, you have more of the same width already to hand.

Making the Legs

The legs take the most work, so we'll start there. Cut 8 pieces to 23½"

Assembly

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