Yesterday morning I turned leg after leg, experimenting with different diameters and shapes to produce a folding stool that would easily hold a 225-pound person but not look like it was made with Tuscan-order columns.
About 2 p.m. I had my answer. Here are the specs on this stool:
Legs: 1-3/16”-diameter x 24” long. The ankle is 7/8” diameter with the taper starting 6” from the floor.
Hardware: 5/16” x 3” hex bolt, 5/16” x 2-1/2” eye bolt. Three washers. Two acorn nuts.
The stool is stout. Sitting in it inspires confidence. And it looks only marginally heavier. The one shown is in teak (yes, more teak offcuts. Will I ever be rid of them?). The design also worked fine in mahogany.
One other note: This stool starts out with a seat about 18” from the floor. After the leather stretches, it ends up about 16” from the floor. Now I can write the chapter for “Campaign Furniture” on these stools.
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.
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.
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.
Today I’m building a couple of three-legged folding stools for “Campaign Furniture.” We’ve been building these all summer in classes and for fun, but I have neglected to take photos of the process – not that there is much of a process.
The great thing about these stools is they take almost no material or time. The two stools I’m building today are made from scraps left over from campaign chests, Roorkhee chairs and hides I have sitting in the basement.
All you need are three 1” x 1” x 23-1/2” sticks – perfect offcuts, really.
One of these two stools is based on a late-19th-century example shown in one of Christopher Clarke Antiques’ catalogs. These stools were quite common (they still are, really). In addition to the military, these stools were common among artists, campers, sportsmen and hunters.
The only thing keeping these stools from being a perfect weekend project is the hardware. The old three-way bolts are very hard to come by. Time to talk to a blacksmith.
