Posted by on Mar 8, 2020 in Projects | Comments Off on Child’s Stool

Child’s Stool

A friend of mine just had a baby, and I wanted to make her something for him. I had a couple of pieces of African mahogany leftover from doing Julie’s plant stand so I decided to use that to make a multipurpose stool.

I didn’t design this one; 25 years ago, maybe a little more, when I was just starting into serious woodworking, I got a book with designs for children’s furniture. I made several pieces from that book including a crib/youth bed for newborn Ben and a really neat stool/chair thing that could be used in multiple ways as he grew. I have no idea what happened to that original stool or the book the design came from, but I still had the pattern I’d made it from:

Patterm
This is the ancient pattern I’d saved from the stool project.

The only question left unanswered was how wide to make the actual seat. I thought I remembered it being under a foot — is made for a child, after all — but I couldn’t find the book or the one I’d made long ago. I looked at my scrap piece and figured I could handle 11 inches, so that was the figure I went with.

First I cut two pieces from the larger mahogany scrap, which was just big enough to get them in one piece. Clearly I’d screwed this pattern down before, but I had double-faced tape now; I used that, and a straight bit in the router, to get them identical.

The sides cut quickly thanks to my template.

And then I cut the straight pieces from the other scrap piece. That was only 6-1/2 inches wide, so I had to graft a cutoff piece to the side of one.

Flat pieces
The two flat pieces which form the seat. Yes, the one on the right has an extra piece grafted onto it.

(No, they’re not that different in real life; African mahogany has a high degree of chatoyance, so it’s perceived color changes with angle and light.)

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Next, I took my pattern again and routed the grooves on the inside face of each side piece to receive the seat. I used a 1/2″ upcut spiral and a 5/8″ guide bushing, which left me room for a 1/8″ tenon shoulder on the seat pieces. I rounded over the tenons and that was basically it for joinery. It glued together in one step.

After three coats of Arm-R-Seal, it was finished:

In the lowest position, it’s a nice little rocking chair.
Held this way, it’s a low seat for pleasure or play.
In this position it’s a solid stool for sitting or standing on, depending on the need.
At this level it can be sat on or stood on to reach mid-level shelves.
At full height, it’s 13 inches tall and stable enough to help a young one reach the kitchen or bathroom sink.

I really wish I could find that book again, because the designer of this piece did a great job.

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