The Three-Legged Stool

Sometimes you make something just because you want to try something different. I’ve seen several versions of these, and decided to make one.

I’ve had this slab of cypress for a little while (from the friend with the sawmill)

This slab has a couple of knots and a few splits and checks. After marking the clear wood for the seat and leg blanks, I cut them out with with a circular saw and the bandsaw.

We already covered how to get from the roughed out seat blank to a true circle.

A little compass work lays out the locations to drill the holes for the legs.

The plan was to install the legs at a 105 degree angle to the seat, leaving them splayed by 15 degrees.

I’m amazed at guys that can accurately drill the holes for the legs using nothing but a brace-and-bit, and a sliding t-bevel.

A drill press and a hacked-together jig for me please.

With the jig on the drill press table and the blank on top and up against the angled fences, it only took a few minutes to get the point of the bit lined up with the layout mark for one of the holes.

Clamp the jig down and drill one hole, then turn the blank to the next hole and drill again. Repeat once more and you’re done.

Flattening the rough-sawn face of the top with a smoothing plane came next.

With the holes drilled and the top flat, I spent some time refining the shape of the seat.

First, using a block plane and a spokeshave to put a wide, shallow bevel on the underside.

Followed by rounding over the edges and cleaning up the sanding marks around the seat with the spokeshave.

Then came texturing and slightly dishing the seat with a gouge.

With the seat done, it’s on to the legs.

I’ve never turned duplicate parts before so I went with a plain straight leg design. The wood turning operations were pretty simple:

Starting off, the square blanks were turned round with a roughing gouge.

After that, a light planing cut with a skew chisel to get to the final diameter.

Then, turning the tenon down to match the holes in the seat.

I cut the tenon a little long, knowing I was going to level the stool and trim the ends of the legs after it was assembled.

(Totally not because I had a blowout turning the first one)

This little plywood gauge helped keep all three legs consistent. One cutout was for the diameter of the leg, the other was for the diameter of the tenon.

All that was left was to turn a nice transition from the leg to the tenon, and a little sanding.

And to make two more.

With all the parts made, we can put this little stool together,

Dry fitting the legs and scribing where they protruded through the top of the seat meant that I could cut them to rough length before they were glued in.

Kerfing the tenons for a wedge came next, then I glued everything up.