Step Stools

[Daniel Rabinovitz]

Three step stools made of hard maple sides with cherry steps

Sanded to 150 grit
Raised grain with distilled water
Dye - custom mix = medium walnut with liquitex yellow oxide acrylic artist color
Used rag with gloved hands to schmear the dye into the pores.
Grain was raised slightly by water based dye. But didn't do anything about it.
Coat of BLO cut 50% with thinner - waited two weeks for it to dry - wanted to make sure.
Coat of Zinser Blond dewaxed shellac cut 50% with alcohol
Now, used maroon scrub pad to knock down grain.
First coat of water based polyurethane
Second scrub down with maroon scrub pad
Second coat of water based polyurethane

[David Wilson]

Looking good Daniel. Are they your design?

[Daniel Rabinovitz]

David
I don't remember where I got the designs from.
Most likely from David Marks, and the Shaker Shop Drawings and Book of Shaker Furniture. But modified by me - although you can see that there was not much modifing. Then again, I didn't want the units to be more than about 14/15 inches out from the wall, when stored. So I measured the treads on our aluminum step ladder (they're less than 4 inches wide).

Also someone asked, in another thread, about applying water based polyurethane over BLO. So I went with several fellows suggestion concerning using shellac over the BLO before the application of water based poly.

Daniel

[John Hart]

When I first looked at them, I thought Shaker. Very classy...I love 'em