Make a wood bar stool
This is a classic bar stool design and can serve many purposes. I am giving this one to my son to use as a guitar stool. He’s been using a flimsy drum throne for years and like this is long overdue.
As I was designing this, I kept thinking to myself how easy this project would be to build. It’s just four legs joined together with dowels. As it sometimes the case, actually building something comes with challenges I never expect on paper.
Big challenges were getting the compound angles for the legs cut accurately, and cutting the connector dowels to the proper lengths. The solution was to make a simple assembly jig…or frame…in which I could position the legs to get a good fit.
But I found the biggest challenge was keeping the parts in order. There are eight dowels at four different lengths. Labeling everything will help enormously. I did that and still managed to get things mixed up! Thankfully, I discovered my screw-up before the glue had dried!
Plans:
- WWMM Bar Stool (pdf)
- Sketchup File
June 20, 2014 @ 11:48 am
you wouldn’t be slamming Matthias there, would you LOL
June 20, 2014 @ 11:50 am
Drill press tables are over-rated, unless you need to drill wildly inaccurate repetitious holes. 😉 Since I do that all the time I have more money in my drill press table, fence, and stops than many woodworkers do in their drill presses. With built in 1/32″ scales for the fence location and stops in both directions I seldom mark a hole location on the workpiece. Just set everything up and go.
You sure are getting good with the bandsaw. I noticed you didn’t even have to sand the edge of the seat before you put the roundover on it.
June 20, 2014 @ 11:57 am
Oh yeah, I must have missed the part in the video where you take a flying leap onto the bar stool to test it’s strength. If you haven’t done that yet I expect we’ll see it in Mere Minutes. Just be sure to were these, safety glasses.
June 20, 2014 @ 3:48 pm
I love this design. Not too far off the design I used. When I first made mine it was made all from 2X4 scrap cut into square stock. The seat was then laminated together with glue. Then up at the top there was a 2/3 width set of 2 x 4 with a lap joint to attach the seat. Then 3/4 the way down the same width of 2×4 were used as braces joining opposite corners.
June 20, 2014 @ 8:10 pm
That stool does look like a challenge so my best bet is to go buy one. lol Great video Steve.
June 21, 2014 @ 6:44 am
Another great project! I’d like to know how you determine which angles to use. Why 19 degrees instead of 20? Why 7 degrees instead of 5 or 10?
June 23, 2014 @ 8:04 pm
Was that the first one you made or did you make a practice stool sample first?
June 26, 2014 @ 6:22 am
It’s good to see middle school age children expressing an interest in woodworking.
June 26, 2014 @ 7:15 am
A stool has been something I been thinking about building for awhile now, but chairs are one of the areas of woodworking I’m clueless on and this really just blew my mind on how actually simple it was to make it. Thanks Steve!
March 14, 2017 @ 8:22 pm
Yes great idea. Picked up my supplies today.
March 8, 2018 @ 3:02 am
Would be useful if this was in metric