I’ve made several versions of this stool over the years including one iteration in hickory which we featured in our WoodSense column in Issue 103 (Oct/Nov 2021). We received enough requests for plans for that piece that I was pleased to have the chance to revisit the design for this story. The stool’s splayed legs give it a wide, stable stance, and its scooped seat makes for a comfortable perch. I find the finished product equally at home as a shop stool or snugged up to the breakfast bar in the kitchen. The build is straightforward, but still presents some challenges when it comes to joinery as there are compound bevels involved. For those unfamiliar with the term, a compound bevel is a cut angled away from 90˚ in two directions, whereas a standard bevel is angled in just one direction. To simplify the process, I developed a system for making these compound cuts using shop-made wedges that eliminate some of the set up hassles. I also used “loose” dowel joinery for the leg to seat connections so the shoulders at the top of the legs are made with a single cut and fit firmly against the underside of the seat for added strength. The stretchers are placed to serve well as footrests while also lending structural support.
Splayed legs with “loose” joinery
Four wedged dowels fit through angled holes to join the tapered legs to the scooped seat. Loose Domino tenons join the inner stretchers to the front and rear stretchers and the front and rear stretchers to the legs.
Order of Work
- Make the legs
- Drill and shape the seat
- Add the stretchers
- Assemble and finish
onlineEXTRAS
Legs: holes, bevels, tapers
Mill stock for the four legs to the specified size. Mark the two outer faces on each leg. Set up a vertical drilling fixture on your drill press and clamp the legs in place with the wider marked face against the vertical table. See p. 22 for a similar setup. Drill a 1" diameter hole in the end of each leg. At the table saw, bevel the ends of the legs, tilting the blade to produce the side-to-side splay and positioning a wedge against the miter gauge for the front-to-back rake. Finish shaping the legs by tapering their inside faces.
Drill the legs. Position the fixture to center the legs under the bit. Clamp the legs securely before drilling the 1" diameter, 21⁄2" deep holes. I find a brad point drill works better than a Forstner bit for drilling end grain, see p. 60.
Wedges for good measure
When a project requires setting up different machines to cut the same angles–for example the angled holes drilled through the stool seat on the drill press and the compound bevel on the top of the legs cut on the table saw—making wedges can help make those cuts match. Once you have the wedges, you won’t need to measure, and even if the wedges aren’t perfect, all the angles will be consistent which is more important. Cutting the wedges with a tapering jig that is calibrated in degrees makes the process that much more straightforward.
Mirrored compound angles. Tilt the blade on your table saw to 5˚. Fasten a 4˚ wedge to the miter gauge with double-faced tape with the narrow end of the wedge toward the blade. Bevel the tops of the first two legs with the wider marked face against the miter gauge and the narrower one against the table. Reverse the wedge and cut the second two legs with the marked faces in the same orientation.
Taper the legs. Taper the two inside faces of each leg guiding the pieces with a shop-made tapering sled. The tapers should leave the piece full width and thickness at the top, decreasing to 11⁄8" square at the bottom. Because the legs are rectangular, you’ll need to reconfigure the sled after cutting the first side of each leg.
Drill and shape the seat
Mill the seat blank to size, edge gluing pieces if necessary to make up the required width. Clamp an auxiliary table with an attached fence to your drill press. Make a 4˚ and a 5˚ sloped platform from tapered wedges screwed to a plywood base. Stack the platforms one atop the other on the auxiliary table to position and drill the four angled holes through seat with a backer board underneath the blank to minimize tearout. Then lay out the seat’s curvature and cut away the majority of the waste on the table saw before routing the seat to shape.
Wedges set the angle. Register the 5˚ platform against the auxiliary table’s fence and the 4˚ platform’s cleat against the inside of the rear 5˚ wedge. Locate the seat blank against the 4˚ platform’s side and rear fences as shown and drill the first two holes through the seat, rotating the blank in between holes. Reverse the 5˚ platform to drill the second set of holes.
Smooth it out. Make the router track and sub-base as shown below. Attach the sub-base to your router and chuck up a 3⁄4" diameter bowl bit. Clamp the track atop the seat and guide the router along it to make the cut. Shift the track over 1⁄2" and make a second pass. Continue in this fashion until the entire seat is shaped.
Cut the stretcher joinery
Cut the dowels to length and fit those into the legs. Then dry fit the legs to the seat. Measure down 14-1/2" along the inside corners of the legs and mark a centerline for the front and rear stretcher mortises. Draw a line along the length of front and rear stretchers 1/2" down from the top edge. Align these layout lines and mark the stretchers for length. Cut the stretchers to length at the table saw, guiding the pieces at the appropriate angle with a miter gauge. To cut the stretcher mortises, I used a Domino machine, but you could also use a shop-made mortising jig with a plunge router. Check online for plans for one such jig. Mortise the legs and ends of the front and rear stretchers, then reassemble the stool with the stretchers in place and repeat the process to size and cut the inner stretchers. Cut the inner stretcher mortises and the mating ones in the front and rear stretchers.
Clamp and measure. Clamp the legs in place to make sure they are fully seated. Make clamp pads with a hole in their undersides to accommodate the dowels poking thru the seat. Align the layout marks, clamp the stretchers in place and mark them for length.
Mortise the legs. Clamp the legs to your bench with their outside face down. Mortise them with the Domino machine sitting atop a 1⁄4" thick spacer. Align the machine with the layout lines you drew earlier.
Mortise the front and rear stretchers. To help with mortising the ends of the front and rear stretchers, I made a simple alignment fixture that included toggle clamps to hold the pieces in place. Cut the mortises with a 1⁄8" spacer under the machine, aligning the machine with the 1⁄2" line you drew earlier.
Mortise the inner stretchers. To cut the mortises in the ends of the inner stretchers you need to hold the stretchers at a 4˚ incline so the cut is perpendicular to the beveled face. To do this, I made another simple fixture using a pair of 4˚ wedges let into the edge of a piece of particle board.
Assemble and finish
Ease the edges of the legs and stretchers with a 1/8" roundover bit and the bottom edges of the seat with a 1/2" roundover bit. Sand everything through 220 grit. Glue the dowels into the legs, taking care to align the growth rings of the two pieces as closely as possible. Cut the wedges and the wedge slots in the center of the dowels at the bandsaw so that the slots are perpendicular to the wider side of the legs. Drill holes at the bottom of the slots to help prevent splitting. Dry fit everything to rehearse the process, first fitting the stretchers to the legs, and then fitting the leg assembly to the seat. Then spread glue on the all the mating surfaces and fit the pieces together. Clamp the legs to the seat before driving in the wedges. Clamp the stretcher joints and allow the glue to set. Afterwards, cut and sand the dowels flush with the seat surface and trim the legs so the stool sits level. Finish as desired. I used polyurethane.
Drill for insurance. Drill a 3⁄16" hole at the bottom of each wedge slot, angling the bit so it makes the hole parallel to the beveled leg top.
Clamp and wedge. To keep the legs tight against the underside of the seat, clamp the entire stool to your benchtop. If necessary to seat individual legs, you can clamp them directly with help from the drilled-out clamping pads you made earlier. Tap in the wedge to secure the legs.
Pull everything together. Once the wedges are in place, you can remove the clamp holding the stool to the bench. Clamp across the stretcher joints, holding he clamp pads in place with double-sided tape.