Handtool woodworking class – project finished
At last, the stool project that once began in the handtool woodworking class is finished. I finally fixed the top to the base and applied the last coat of finish (bees wax on top of three coats of BLO).
For now, I’m happy with the result – see yourself:
Accidentally, this picture graciously hides some of the mistakes that I made. It barely hints at the single leg with the taper on the outside, and you can’t look under the top, so you can’t notice the gap between the left leg and the top.
The second picture accentuates the wrongly-tapered leg, but hides the splintering on the end-grain side of the top. Note to self: Take care when shooting end-grain.
And finally, a close-up view of the multi-coloured top. This was joined from some scraps (the bicolor-shavings from the last post came from here). This shot doesn’t hide any mistakes, in fact, the joining was much easier than I feared. I wonder if anyone can guess the three different woods I used here. The winner will be allowed to buy himself some ice cream.
In conclusion, I did learn a lot from this little project. There are some things that I would do different next time, as well as some things that I’d avoid. This was the first time that I worked with hardwood (as in hard wood), and that’s really quite different from the pine or fir projects that I’ve done before. Much better, though. Of course, the stool is not a design masterpiece. For example I’d build the stretchers much thinner next time, but then, that was not the focus of this project. And it’s pretty, anyway.
So much for this project. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to build next. There are some entries on my to-do list, but I haven’t decided yet.
So far, thanks for reading and remember to guess the wood the top is made of!
Woodworking with hand tools 
QS White Oak, walnut, and Cherry?
I might go buy myself ice cream anyway 😉
I do like the table, especially the chamfer relief on just two of the four edges.
Torch, that is a very close guess. But I’m in Europe, we don’t have white oak (quercus alba) here… You can go and get some ice cream, though 🙂
Well shoot! That was going to be my guess as well. Hmm. Okay, how about QS Quercus robur, walnut and cherry?
Great looking stool! And don’t give all the credit to the photos, a well made piece, that works as a whole, can “hide” quite a few “mistakes”. I bet most people don’t notice them in person either. Congrats!
Oh well, you’ve caught me here… It is either Quercus robur, or quercus petraea, I simply don’t know. We have both of them in Germany.
Dan, you’re hereby allowed to get yourself some ice cream!
And thanks for the compliments!
In building my Stickley table, I’ve only gotten as far as making three of the legs, and I’ve already chosen one for the back side, to, um, put my best foot forward. I made the classic mistake while planing it down to thickness of slightly tapering the end; it’s 3/32″ narrower than the rest of the leg, oh the horror!
Looks good. I had the opposite experience with hard and soft woods. When I first started in woodworking, I used exclusively hard hard woods (jarrah, blackbutt, red gum) and then I did a project in a soft wood (silky oak) and I was amazed… my plane moved effortlessly… my chisel pushed though without a big whack… Anyway… Glad to see you enjoyed your project, and picked up a few new skills.
Lovely piece of work. The striped wood colours are very pleasing.
I just read a lot of your posts on your site and its amazing some of the work that you have been able to do…especially considering you admit to being relatively inexperienced with this stuff.
I am just starting out with woodworking and it is an incredibly rewarding task.
Thanks for sharing you work on here