A parade of 3-legged stools

Update:  Christmas Day as Elise was enjoying the cedar stool by kneeling instead of sitting, she fell off and broke the tenon.  Paul drilled it out and replaced it with a locust peg from the house.  After more gluing, sanding, and polycrylic finishing, it was a good as new.  Note to all:  these stools are for sitting, especially the soft wood leg.

The four new stools for the grands lined up next to the original stool from my wood turning class last year.  The new stools have 7 or 8 coats of water-based polycrylic satin finish and I waxed the tops of the stools with Renaissance micro-crystalline wax polish.

Nov 23

Put a coat of sanding finish on the seats of all the stools and then sanded them with 400 grit sandpaper.  On the underside of the stool I put the first initial of the grandchild who will eventually own it--probably overkill as the boys' stools are 3 inches taller than the girls' and the legs of each stool are made out of different wood, but the initials can't hurt.

The water-based polyurethane satin finish I am using recommends 3 coats of finish, with a light sanding in between coats, so I will probably aim for that level of finish.

Nov 19

I have the major parts of the 3-leg stools all ready for assembly.  For the stools with the darker spindle legs (red cedar and walnut) I need to make some lighter colored hardwood wedges.  I have enough walnut wedges for the two stools with the lighter spindle legs (ash and hemlock).  I just finished trimming all those walnut wedges to size (1 inch wide) to fit the through tenons at the top of the seats.  Once I have the wedges and tenons glued and set in place, I will drive the wedges into the tenons to make a permanent fit.  For the half inch part of the tenons that extends over the seat, I will be saw them off with a flush cut saw.  Then sanding and a polyurethane finish will complete the project.

Leaner

This pine split and leaned over the meadow until Paul took it down.

8th and final class

Last night was the final class in our Introduction to Woodturning Course.  Our major task for the  evening was to complete the 3-legged stool.  The students had either 1 or 2 of the legs completed in  the previous class, so they first had to complete turning the remaining legs.  I had 2 legs complete, so I only had to repeat the turnings on the final third leg.  This process went fairly quickly but I needed to make several measurements with a set of calipers to make sure I had the tenon in the right diameter and length, and the correct taper to the leg before putting in the desired beads and cove cuts.  

After turning, I sanded the final leg and then removed it from the lathe and sawed off the waste end from the bottom of the leg.  Each leg had a 1 inch diameter 2 inch long tenon that was designed to fit into the holes in the stool seat.  To hold the legs in the seat we were going to use wedges inserted into the tenons, so we used a hand saw to cut a slot into of each tenon, approximately 1.5 inches long.  It was important to cut the slots parallel to the grain of the tenon.  Then each leg was placed in the appropriate hole in the seat, with the tenon extending about ¾ an inch above the seat.  A Cherry wedge with a bit of carpenter’s glue on the end was placed in the slot in the ash leg tenon and hammered down firmly.  Here it was important to orient the wedge and tenon so that the wedge was perpendicular to the grain of the pine seat.  This way the force of the wedge would not split the grain of the seat.  We used a flat saw to cut the excess ends of the tenons and wedges above the seat and sanded these flush with the surface of the seat. 

At this point in the class there was 1 more hour left, so I was able to work on a potato masher.  I began with a 2 inch diameter 14 inch long cylinder of sugar maple (the maple was already turned into a rough cylindrical shape).  First I smoothed the surface of the cylinder.  The business end of the masher is the full diameter of the cylinder.  The rest of the masher is the handle and I followed the shape of a model masher and put a bead at the end of the handle and a cove cut above it.  The handle is tapered in both directions, up and down the handle.  Near the head of the masher the handle had a step up and then a steep curve to reach the mashing head.  I got some help from the instructors to make a slightly convex surface to the end of the mashing head—I had put a flat surface on it, but the convex surface does a better job crushing things.  The convex surface was turned using a skew chisel.  I used a parting tool to narrow the connections at both ends of the masher.  The instructor helped part of the handle with the skew and then used a hand saw to part of the mashing head. 

I want to sand the stool a bit before putting on a finish.  I might have to sign the piece as it is my first attempt at a design of my own.  The potato masher needs some sanding too and then I will put on a food-safe finish like mineral oil or Boos Block Mystery Oil . 

Here I am hard at work turning the potato masher.  Note my protective face visor and the woodturning smock that keeps the chips from flying down my neck.

I have included pictures of the stools made by the 3 other students in the class for comparison of design.  We were given 3 rectangular blanks of ash and told to turn 3 legs for our stools using any design we wanted.  You can see a wide variety of taper and size of the beads, coves, and slot cuts incorporated in each of the stools. 

A fun class all the way around.  I am going to need some individual instruction to move up to bowl turning.  But I have the lathe to do that job as I ordered and received the new JET 1221VS variable speed wood lathe.  Next purchase will be a set of chisels.

Here are some websites for inspiration:
PA Wilds Artisan galleries for field trip possibilities
Seay Custom Woodworking
Ebner Turnings
Michael Mocho
Wood blanks -- Rockler