Sheffield Tony
Ghost of the disenchanted
Fed up of talking Brexit, time for a bit of woodwork.
I started this stool at a Christmas meet at Wimpole Hall. As is traditional, it has taken a while. I thought I could make a stool to keep in the shed at the allotment for rest and contemplation breaks. The wood available was ash - this is re-growth from ash that was coppiced a few years ago to allow more light into the oaks, in view of the likely demise of the ash, which is the most common species on the estate (
). Not greatly thick - 4-5" diameter, a bit knotty and not long enough to make the back legs for a chair.
The wood more or less chose the design it wanted to be ! I went to rive it into 4 legs, but the split ran out on one, so electing to be a 3 legged stool. I started to prepare the good 3 for the lathe, got as far as knocking the corners off to make a hexagonal cross section, then realised that the bottom of the trunk had a curve that was going to be too much to allow them to be turned without ending up too thin. I decided to go with the flow and have hexagonal legs, and use the curve to give an outward flare at the bottom of the legs. Happily coming from the same billet, the curve was roughly the same.
The remaining bits were enough for the stretchers, but of limited length and with awkwardly placed knots - I worked around them placing the joints between the stretcher pieces to allow me to drill out the loose knots to make the mortices on two of them.
The elm seat was a lump which has been lurking for a while in the garage - it was a bit narrow (Dutch Elm disease means it's about as big as are to be had at Wimpole) hence the curve on the edges of the seat to make use of the curve on the outer edges of the board. The shape is - what do you call it ? where each side is a circular arc struck around the opposite corner ? Can't think of the name, but it made good use of the narrow board.
What I'm hoping to achieve is that right degree of rusticity to say handmade but not badly made. What some might call "handmade tut" :roll: I need to make another, rougher one though, as the other half has decided it is too nice to be allotment grade, and is now redesigning the kitchen to find a space for it ...
I started this stool at a Christmas meet at Wimpole Hall. As is traditional, it has taken a while. I thought I could make a stool to keep in the shed at the allotment for rest and contemplation breaks. The wood available was ash - this is re-growth from ash that was coppiced a few years ago to allow more light into the oaks, in view of the likely demise of the ash, which is the most common species on the estate (
). Not greatly thick - 4-5" diameter, a bit knotty and not long enough to make the back legs for a chair. The wood more or less chose the design it wanted to be ! I went to rive it into 4 legs, but the split ran out on one, so electing to be a 3 legged stool. I started to prepare the good 3 for the lathe, got as far as knocking the corners off to make a hexagonal cross section, then realised that the bottom of the trunk had a curve that was going to be too much to allow them to be turned without ending up too thin. I decided to go with the flow and have hexagonal legs, and use the curve to give an outward flare at the bottom of the legs. Happily coming from the same billet, the curve was roughly the same.
The remaining bits were enough for the stretchers, but of limited length and with awkwardly placed knots - I worked around them placing the joints between the stretcher pieces to allow me to drill out the loose knots to make the mortices on two of them.
The elm seat was a lump which has been lurking for a while in the garage - it was a bit narrow (Dutch Elm disease means it's about as big as are to be had at Wimpole) hence the curve on the edges of the seat to make use of the curve on the outer edges of the board. The shape is - what do you call it ? where each side is a circular arc struck around the opposite corner ? Can't think of the name, but it made good use of the narrow board.
What I'm hoping to achieve is that right degree of rusticity to say handmade but not badly made. What some might call "handmade tut" :roll: I need to make another, rougher one though, as the other half has decided it is too nice to be allotment grade, and is now redesigning the kitchen to find a space for it ...
