It's Roy's Fault

[Gofor]

After watching the Woodwright's Shop episode on the Elizabethan-joint stool, I decided to give it a try. Ended up with this:

The week of Thanksgiving, I split out an oak log (tree dropped in Sept) with maul, axe, and wedges to get some segments that looked like this:

Then took the froe I bought earlier in the year to split off the juvenile wood center and sapwood outer rings. Found out that a froe works a lot better with a froe break, so had to build one:

Learned how to use the axe and froe a bit differently in truing and rough-squaring the billets:

Ended up with some roughly square stock which I then rough dimensioned with the scrub and try planes:

After it dried some, I planed to size, chopped mortises and cut tenons with chisel and saw: , used a drawknife and spokeshave to shape legs (stiles) ,
and used drawknife, chisel, and block plane to make the pins that hold it all together .

Then I fine tuned the tenon fit, and drilled the holes in the legs (Sorry about the blurry picture). I then marked the hole location in the tenons and drilled them offset by about 3/32". (Sorry again, no picture)

Then I assembled it by driving in the pegs. Amazingly it came out quite close to square (one leg off by 1/16th" .

I don't have a good piece of riven wood for the seat at this time, so I made a temporary out of a slab I chainsawed last summer (the chainsaw was the only power tool used in any of the process from tree to stool)
.

A really fun project in which I got to play with the majority of my hand tools, develop some new skills and really hone some prior ones. After it dries a bit more and the weather warms up, I plan to give it a couple coats of linseed oil.

Thanks for lookin'

Go

PS: More pics in my photo gallery in both the "Stool" and "Riving Oak" albums.

Go

 

[Jim Wallace]

That's a really good inspiration for me. Thanks.

 

[Joe Scharle]

Great presentation and very nice stool :icon_thum

 

[Tarhead]

I just saw that episode. Very nice job! How many Bandaids did you need?:rotflm:

 

[Shamrock]

That is so cool! I'm gonna have to try riving my own wood one of these days-it looks like fun

 

[Randall Kepley]

Thats a very nice looking stool my friend, Ive enjoyed watching Roy since I was a kid but I must say I have no interest what so ever of building furniture "The Old Way" but congrats on the stool it looks great. R.K.

 

[Roy G]

If you like Roy's work, read Drew Langsner's book on Country Woodcraft. He goes into similar subjects and shows you how it used to be done. He also teaches classes out by Morganton or Marion.

Roy G
(Not the one who's at fault)

 

[Charlie]

Mark, Nice job.:icon_thum

 

[Sealeveler]

Great presentation and very nice stool :icon_thum

Yea what Joe said plus a few more :icon_thum.
Tony

 

[ChrisB]

One of my goals this year is to make a piece of furniture entirely with hand tools. This gives me some real inspiration and motivation! Thanks!:icon_thum

Chris

 

[erasmussen]

From tree to stool, and it looks great :icon_thum:icon_thum

 

[merrill77]

Looks great!

I'm using hand tools more and more for fine-tuning joinery and decorative details, but dunno if I'll ever go that far. I'm getting tired just thinking about all the planing needed to get flat/square stock :>

 

[CatButler]

Look's great. I love the splayed legs. Hand tools are always fun to play with. I love the design, not a lot of surface area, so you don't have to flatten long boards, and if you rive your own stock, you can get it close to it's final size before a plane has to touch it. Not sure I'm ready to go that far yet, but I would like to hand make some pins for a project I'm working on.

 

[jhreed]

Your presentation is so good, I had to check my hands for splinters. I envy you hand tool guys.
James

 

[Canuck]

Your WIP pictures really should be preserved. :wink_smil

Anyone looking at the finished project would think that a lot of machine power went into the build. Pull out the WIP pics and prove them wrong!

Great work. I just got muscle cramps all over looking at the progress pics.

Wayne

 

[Gofor]

Thank you all for the nice comments.

As for the presentation, I will disclose that I had to go back and re create the riving process. When I first did it for the stool, it took me a lot of false starts (tried shaping with saw, draw knife, etc), and I thought it would end up in the fire pile, so I neglected to take any pictures. It took me two days just to rough out the legs. After several days, my chopping skills improved and the muscles toned up a bit, and I learned that the axe is the secret to saving yourself a lot of work. When I went out and shot the pics of the riving break, using the froe and the ax, and flattening the board with the plane, it only took me 2 hours start to finish including the pic taking time.

Mark: I only used 8 or 10 band aids. Not bad for me :embaresse:embaresse:embaresse

For anyone deciding on doing the stool, I recommend doi9ng a bit more research on the riving and green wood draw-bore mortise/tenons by visiting J. Alexander's site : Greenwoodworking and P. Follansbee's blog:Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes .

Both are very informative.

Thanks again. The comments make the extra time taking pics worthwhile.

Go

 

[eyekode]

Thanks for the pictorial! That stool really turned out nice. I made three stools in the last year. But I still need another! I had planned on making this one. But I really like this design and may have to give it a shot.
Salem