Building A Stool For Charity

[Steve Kohn]

My daughter asked me to build a wooden stool. Once built she would have it signed by her class and then give it back to me to have a protective coating applied. After being finished the stool will be auctioned off. All proceeds go to the school.

The top of the stool will be around 10 inches wide and the complete stool height would be around 18 inches. The picture my daughter provided seems to show the legs being at 90 degrees from the seat. It seems to me that a stool with this construction would be pretty likely to tip over. So can someone provide what kind of angle the legs should be off vertical to improve the stability of the stool? And then what angles the stretches would need to be at also.

[paul cottingham]

I dont have angles handy for legs, but for the stretchers, just put an elastic across two legs (after you have seated them in the top) and transfer the angle to a sliding bevel. Voila, no measuring. I will try to rememeber to find leg angle numbers for you.

[Jerry Miner]

I recently built this stool (based on a Thomas Moser design) with the legs splayed 12 degrees from vertical:

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