Hacker News Reader

Christopher Schwarz, who wrote "The Anarchist's Tool Chest", recommended elsewhere in the comments, also wrote a book "The Anarchist's Design Book". In it, he covers two basic, simple construction techniques for building what he calls "furniture of necessity".

He doesn't cover specifically a stool of the type you're describing, but he does discuss exactly the problem of joining legs to a seat, and gives several projects using the technique that could be adapted to what you want to build.

If you're looking to build something bar stool height, you'd probably need to add stretchers to make the chair strong enough. If you're going for chair height, you could trivially adapt the staked back stool in chapter 6 to your purposes.

In the interests of full disclosure, I own both "The Anarchist's Tool Chest" and "The Anarchist's Design Book" by Christopher Schwarz, as well as "With the Grain" and "Chairmaker's Notebook", which are also published by his company. My standing gift request is anything from Lost Art Press (said company) that I don't already own. I have no business interest in the company, but I do wish them well, because they publish excellent material.

Yeah, woodworking relies rather heavily on apprenticeship and oral tradition.

I'm more of a bodger than a structural engineer, but I will tell you two things: joints are the weak points, and triangle rigidity is your friend. If you go looking for pictures of stools, you'll see that only the very lowest "milking stools" consist of three legs and a slab. Almost all stools will have a subframe at the top which reinforces the seat and stops the legs from wobbling, and most will have pieces lower down making the legs into trapezoids (and providing footrests).

Furniture rarely fails with a clean snap in a structural member - more like a joint goes, rigidity is lost, and the thing folds over sideways.

You can work this out from structural engineering principals - Euler's theory of column buckling would likely govern the cross sectional area of the legs.

But yes, you're right, building things from wood is such a time-honored technique that it is rare for this to be required. Millions of stools, cabinets, and timber-framed houses have already been successfully built, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel when you can just copy what has been done previously.

I'd say start with pocket screw joints. You can buy a jig from Kreg for ~$100 for making the holes. You could build the entire stool in a few hours if you have all the right tools.

I like the pocket screws for beginners because it allows beginners to have some success and build confidence to do more. It also helps to finish a project if you don't have lots of time.

I wouldn't use plywood but something like poplar. It's still cheapish, it's easy to work with and it's reasonably easy to finish or paint.

Something nobody has mentioned is finishing. You can construct something beautifully with dovetails but if you don't finish it correctly you will ruin it. Conversely simple construction that's well finished looks great. Finishing in my opinion is the hardest part of any woodworking project.

I like poplar, the drawers of this tool chest are poplar:

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/photos/ancient/9.html http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/photos/ancient/10.html

The problem with poplar (much like pine) is finishing. It tends to be blotchy like I think you can see in the pictures.

If you don't care about how it looks (I didn't for a shop toolchest) then it is a joy to work with. Planes really really well. Hard enough and strong enough (that chest is 20 years old and the drawer slides, poplar on maple, work great. Silky smooth feel to them).

Well, if you want it to be tough and durable I think the first think you need to do is choose a different material than plywood :)

Plywood is extremely strong...I'm not a furniture engineer but I'd wager there's no way a person would be heavy enough to break the seat portion of this hypothetical chair if you used 3/4" plywood

Plywood is strong in some ways but it's not really suited for a stool with legs attached how he described. Especially 3/4" plywood. As the stool was used the legs would work themselves loose.

A decent hardwood (maple, cherry, walnut, etc) would be a better choice and you'd want 4/4 or even 5/4 stock.

You get a hang of these things by building stuff, as well as looking at works and designs of others.

3/4" (~19mm) plywood is thick enough for most furniture projects. You could use 1" dowel for the legs and attach them by making a hole through the plywood, sawing a small split to the leg, drive it through and tighten it with a small wedge in the split.

> From the people I've talked to who build their own things from wood, they either build from published plans, or they use their intuition developed from seeing a lot of successful designs and make theirs similar.

Or just look at actual "shipping" furniture and borrow their dimensions.