I do finish my projects

  There, the small organizational bin I made from an orange crate is complete, painted and filled with my wife's stuff.  A project like this is a great starter project for kids.  If you like folk art this would also be a good item to paint, more useful and cheaper than buying items from China at the craft store.  Actually I chose the light green paint just in case a grand daughter wanted to paint flowers for her Oma.

   I am a wood junkie, but I am also a bibliophile. ( an a bit over board as a collector of knives too).  Anyway I have shelves of history, art and wood working books.  

  This book fits into all three categories.  Tools - Rare and Ingenious, is a wonderful coffee table book.  Even people that are not interested in tools  will love to flip through the pages of this book.  Maybe you can give it as a Mother's Day gift? 

   There are hundreds of glossy photos showing the art of the tool making as well as their cleverness .

  What a great dual purpose saw.

  Finally spring has sprung here in the north.  We spent the morning working in the yard and now I am going to spend the afternoon letting my feeble old back recover. 

  Thanks to Clive for the loan of the wonderful book.  I will return it....soon...

  cheers, ianw

Folding Stool

  Occasionally I make something from a plan, and actually follow the plan pretty closely. This week I went to our local Library and picked up a book called:

  
   This book has a bunch of the standard quick and easy projects and one caught my eye.  The idea of a stool for the work shop that folds out of the way when I don't need it is a good idea.  I brought the book home and started into the project.

  The glossy photo in the book showed an  oddly proportioned stool but I figured that it would have never gotten published it if was a total bomb.  After all, books aren't the internet, books have editors and publishing companies that have a vested interest in the information that they share.

 

 
  There is the plan and the following few pages show what to do first and for each projects gives a tip or two on order of assembly and the like.

   My stool is made from poplar.  I still have a couple of slabs of poplar left from making my grand kid's, cribs and beds and so I milled the wood to 1 1/2 thickness for this project.  The suggested material was 1 1/4 not 1 1/2 but I figured as a plus sized guy I would error on the side of sturdy in my construction.

   

  The end result is a folding stool that is 27 inches tall and stable front to back, but not so much side to side. This is a place to perch my butt while working on a lower bench, not a place to sit by the hour and drink beer. Think, workshop stool, not bar stool.  The seat is 3/4 plywood rather than glued up poplar and 10 inches in diameter. The brace on the legs is just a hunk of scrap I put on to check out the basic result, it will get changed when I decide on the final form of the stool.

   The design is good, but as happens it can't serve all people equally well. I made a couple of modifications to the stool to improve its comfort and usability. For example it is too tall for my wife to use comfortably, (saws can fix that) and my bottom is too wide for that seat. 

   Next blog I will share the changes I made to the Folding Stool.

P.S.  

http://www.thetoolstore.ca/viewItem.asp?idProduct=7383&blackjack-tilt-bin-organizer-set-6-compartments

  

  Organising is like taxes, it is ever present.