Category: Campaign Furniture

As a woodworker who loves to make chairs, I always try to use components that are as light and strong as possible. Thin spindles look better and can help a chair conform to the body of the sitter.

But wood has its limits.

Today I started assembling some folding campaign stools that were based off an original that had 1”-diameter legs. The original had a thin 5/8”-diameter ankle and 7/8”-diameter foot. They looked fantastic, so I decided to build the project as-is.

Unfortunately, we moderns are lard-butts.

In comparing the new stools to my old ones (which had a 1-1/8”-diameter legs and chunkier ankles), I definitely preferred the feel of the chunkier stools.

I weigh 185 pounds, and the stool with the thin legs was just too flexible to be comfortable. Every time I shifted my weight, the stool would give a little bounce. That’s not good feedback in the buttocks region.

So if you are building this stool before the book comes out, I recommend you beef up the legs. Use 1-1/8”- or 1-1/4”-diameter legs. Tomorrow I’m going to turn some more legs and try to get the look of the skinny leg on a thicker component.

Indeed: Spanks for stools.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today I was riveting the heck out of the seats for these folding campaign stools I’m building. And after the 25th rivet, I realized something bad was going to happen. I was going to run out of “burrs.”

Burrs are the copper washers that get compressed against the leather and hold the rivet tight. You need one burr for every rivet. And I was five burrs short of finishing the seat.

This is generally not my way. I always buy too much hardware – I have boxes full of knobs, screws and doovlackys galore. But today I was five burrs short.

So I abandoned the project until I could buy some more copper rivets and burrs. I made dinner. My mind wandered.

Growing up in Arkansas, our garage was home to three things: my dad’s workshop, kids’ toys and my father’s private collection of canned tuna fish, Tostitos and toilet paper.

We belonged to one of those early warehouse-style food store where you buy food stacked on pallets and box it yourself. My dad, keen on the idea, bought boxes and boxes of tuna, Tostitos and TP. I often wondered if he tried to keep the tuna in balance with the TP. As in: Do I have enough TP to accommodate this amount of tuna?

But our family’s humor has always leaned toward the scatalogical.

When my friends saw the stack of tuna, TP and Tositios, they’d mock me and ask to see the fallout shelter and so forth. I just shrugged my shoulders. I’ve always liked Tostitos and a clean bum.

Somehow today this image (of the Tostitos, not the clean bum) wandered through my head, and I scolded myself for not buying more burrs the last time I was buying buckles.

But wait, I thought. I did buy some more burrs. They were with the buckles. In the bag with the buckles.

I rushed to the shop. Sure enough, the bag was full of buckles and burrs.

Ha! Time for a tuna fish sandwich.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several readers have asked about the hardware-store solution to the three-way bolt needed for the three-legged folding stool. While I am working on an old-school solution, here is how to accomplish the job with about $3.50 of easy-to-source metal.

Note that this is for 1”-diameter legs. If you bump up to 1-1/8” or 1-1/4”, you will need a longer hex bolt and eye bolt.

One 5/16” x 2-1/2” hex bolt
One 1/4” x 2” eyebolt (if your store carries 5/16”, use that instead)
One 5/16” acorn nut
One 1/4” acorn nut
Two 5/16” washers
One 1/4” washer

When I use this hardware arrangement, I drill 21/64” through-holes in the legs. And I usually coat most of the threads of the eyebolt with some epoxy. This coating prevents the threads from chewing up the hole in the leg.

I’ve had this arrangement in a stool that my 13-year-old daughter has been using daily since last year. So far, so good.

— Christopher Schwarz

When you start working in the world of furniture that folds and unfolds, it’s easy to get your frontal lobe into a blender. Even though you know that this contraption should work, you don’t actually believe it until you build it.

With this folding officer’s desk, I had six butt hinges all turning in different directions. So keeping inside and outside all straight as I screwed them in kept me flummoxed. And I kept wondering how much spacing I should leave between the folding aprons and the inside of the legs (my experiments with the mechanism told me the answer was “none”).

But still you worry.

So it was satisfying for the table base to snap open and shut perfectly on the first try.

Now I just need to build the folding desktop, which locks the base in the open position. I’d better get the jack plane sharpened up – the top is 24” wide, and I have only a 13” surface planer.

— Christopher Schwarz