3-legged stool - Ambrosia Maple/Walnut

[Tim Rinehart]

Last month at the Southern Piedmont woodturners meeting, Alan Leland demonstrated his spin on a 3-legged stool, and with some adaptations on a style from David Scott's stools. I decided to give it a go and as a surprise for my wife...I think it drives her nuts when she can't come out to see what I'm doing in the shop

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Hardest part of this project, is the prep for drill jigs to accurately hold the seat while being drilled, and the drilling of the holes in the legs. I drew up a storyboard for the walnut legs, and that helped keep things in check for duplication of the pattern. Barely had enough solid material out of the kiln dried plank I had to extract all the materials, and you can see where one of the cross braces has some void in it that was unavoidable in the scheme of things, but that worked out well aesthetically I think.

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The seat wood is beautifully quilted ambrosia maple I've been waiting for the right project for...and this seemed appropriate. LOML has said this stool is not for sale!

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The bottom of the seat has a screw chuck hole that needs to be hidden, and it was a good opportunity to try out a new texture wheel I got.
The finish on both seat and legs is a couple coats of Antique Oil, hand buffed only.

If you search on Alan Leland, you will find his site and he has plans for this on there. C&C welcome.

[Jeff Hamilton Jr.]

Great job on the stool . . . and the joinery - that looks a bit tricky!

[Michelle Rich]

good job..stools are hard, and chairs even harder, but you are on your way

[Nate Davey]

What a spectacular piece of maple for the seat. Beautiful job Tim

[John Keeton]

Tim, this is an absolutely wonderfully done project!! The maple is outstanding, and the spindle work very well done. I can understand the "Not for Sale" sticker on this one!

[Bill Wyko]

Man Oh Man is that a beauty. Nice job!!!

[Charles Bjorgen]

That's a terrific job, Tim. I've been looking for a similar project and will definitely check the Alan Leland site.

[Tim Rinehart]

Thanks all for the nice remarks, it really pushed my patience on turned forms. The process takes a bit of time in that one of the 2 cross-braces needed to be individually measured for after trial fitting the legs, and the last cross-brace individually measured for after that first piece is fit. Definitely not something that would be easy to confidently do on a production basis and know that the joints would end up in decent amount of compression.

[Brian Kent]

I like it a lot.

I am curious about the spindles. Are they thick enough to handle a bit of cross grain or did you have to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure the grain is exactly straight along the spindle?

[Tim Rinehart]

Great job on the stool . . . and the joinery - that looks a bit tricky!


I like it a lot.

I am curious about the spindles. Are they thick enough to handle a bit of cross grain or did you have to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure the grain is exactly straight along the spindle?
Well...let's just say I hope so, but time will tell. I did try to make sure my drilling was in face grain only, which I'm hoping was right to maximize strength.

[Mike Peace]

Beautiful stool. That Ambrosia ample seat really looks great contrasting with the walnut legs.

[Bernie Weishapl]

That is a beautiful stool. Love the wood combo.

[James Combs]

A good looking stool. Not sure I have ever seen one design like it with only two bracing spindles.

[Baxter Smith]

Very nice Tim! That is a great way to show off a special piece of wood.

[Bill Hensley]

Great job Tim! Duplicating the legs and getting it all joined together is quite an accomplishment. I suspect you scored big points on this project!

[Dale Bright]

Tim, that is a great job on this stool from some beautiful wood. Well Done!!!!

[Steve Schlumpf]

That is sweet! Great wood combination but that maple is amazing!! Very nice work Tim!

[Tim Rinehart]

Bernie asked if I could provide a little insight into how I got the correct angle drilled in the seat bottom, so I took a quick pic of the two jigs I had to make for this, the seat and the one for the legs. They are very crude, single purpose jigs for most part...but it works. Bernie...I hope this helps...if not, ask away, I'll be happy to explain any part of it in more detail as needed.
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The instructions that Alan Leland's handout (available online at his site) provides has suggestion for 10 degree angle for this height and taller and up to 15 degrees for some shorter stools. The key is not to have so much splay of the legs they become a trip hazard. Mine were set for somewhere about 11 degrees I think...I just used a crude protractor level that has 2 degree graduations...so not perfect, but good enough to setup my jig. I could have split hairs with my Wixey angle box, but didn't. I just kept rearranging support wood under the platform until the angle was about right. I saved the corner cutoffs from the seat round and used them as bottom supports to place the seat in. Once everything was about right, I just hot-glued it together. (since then, it already fell apart just sitting on the floor so I'll have to go back with something more permanent, like epoxy and/or fasteners). I clamped the seat to the fixture and then clamped the fixture to the drill table after lining up each hole. You do need to make sure you drill at an angle that doesn't point away from center, so setting up site lines that run down the thru the center of the blank. The bottom of the site line should be at the center of the jig, if the jig is symmetric.
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The drilling of the legs was done with a home-brew version of a Oneway drill wizard. This was completely out of scrap hardware, and it too has already come apart as it wasn't made for 'long-term', but it worked fine for the project. I took a piece of 1" nylon bar and mounted it into a piece of poplar stock to form the bottom support base for the slide. The slide is fashioned to accept and hold my cordless drill, and I leveled it by chucking a 10" long piece of 3/8" bar in it...but other methods would work too. If I end up wanting to do more of this sort of thing, I'll either make or buy a version of the drill wizard. It's pretty slick. I kept a small amount of material on each leg's foot to allow holding in the lathe (with spindle locked) while drilling the holes. Those holes are aligned by a strike line using a flat board across the legs while measuring for the stretcher.

Having Alan's instructions handy is helpful, but it does help to see it being done and be able to ask questions along the way. Some things just don't translate easily into words. Hope this helps.