4-Legged Stool with Scooped Seat

[Andrew Nemeth]

Here is a recently completed four legged stool with a scooped seat. Cherry seat, ash legs and stretchers, and accented with walnut wedges. Finished with urethane/BLO/OMS, wiped on, and top-coated with paste wax. This is my first attempted at scooping/saddling a seat and the first time I have used turned tapered tenons and matching mortises. The design is loosely based on Fabian Fischer’s stool featured in the September/October 2016 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine.

All comments and critiques are appreciated.

[jim sauterer]

Beautiful love the seat and the wedged tenons.great piece

[Andrew Nemeth]

Thanks Jim!

[Phil Mueller]

Ditto what Jim said. I’m a fan of cherry and the figure in that seat is really nice...great choice and figure matching. The most “scooping” I’ve done is a few wooden kitchen spoons, so I can appreciate the effort and patience in a full stool seat. Really very well done...and beautiful finish. Thanks for posting.

[Mark Rainey]

Well done Andrew, looks very comfortable!

[Andrew Nemeth]

Thank you Phil and Mark!

[David Utterback]

Very nice - love the contrast. How did you shape the seat? I have tried multiple ways and was wondering which you found to be the best. Thanks

[Mike Henderson]

Looks very nice. Congratulations!

Mike

[Andrew Nemeth]

Very nice - love the contrast. How did you shape the seat? I have tried multiple ways and was wondering which you found to be the best. Thanks

Thank you David!

I did the bulk of the work on the concave surfaces with a kutzall disk on a grinder. I then faired the surfaces with a flap disk on the grinder and a handheld gooseneck card scraper, then on to a random orbit sander with a pretty flexible pad, and finally hand I hand sanded.

I used a no.3 bench plane and a spokeshave to do the bulk of the removal on the convex surfaces, followed by the ROS and finally finished sanded by hand.

The kutzall disk worked well enough but it was not the most pleasant experience due to the noise and dust. Definitely an outdoor project unless you have some sort of dust collection hood with high enough airflow. In the near future, I will probably be looking to a travisher and possibly a scorp or other drawknife to make the experience a bit more peaceful.

[Andrew Nemeth]

Thanks Mike!

[David Utterback]

Thank you David!

I did the bulk of the work on the concave surfaces with a kutzall disk on a grinder. I then faired the surfaces with a flap disk on the grinder and a handheld gooseneck card scraper, then on to a random orbit sander with a pretty flexible pad, and finally hand I hand sanded.

I used a no.3 bench plane and a spokeshave to do the bulk of the removal on the convex surfaces, followed by the ROS and finally finished sanded by hand.

The kutzall disk worked well enough but it was not the most pleasant experience due to the noise and dust. Definitely an outdoor project unless you have some sort of dust collection hood with high enough airflow. In the near future, I will probably be looking to a travisher and possibly a scorp or other drawknife to make the experience a bit more peaceful.

I also have built 2 cherry chairs with scooped seats and have tried all of the above except the flap disk and scorp. There does not seem to be any easy way for me. I used the grinder outdoors on my latest after using it in the shop the first time. What a mess! Lots of Youtube videos showing routers but I have steered clear since it is one of my least favorite tools due to noise and mess.

I bought a homemade travisher on SMC and it works but is not good for removing a lot of wood at a time - at least not in my hands. Grain reversal is a problem in these types of seats. I have also eyed an adze and would like try one some day.

One short cut I will try with my next one is to pre-drill the depths. It is a little discouraging to check the depth and find that I still have a long ways to go.

Thanks for the information and a view of your artistry!

[Frederick Skelly]

Very nice. Definitely one to be proud of!

[Andrew Nemeth]

I have also eyed an adze and would like try one some day.

An adze might be a good replacement for the kutzall disk for bulk waste removal. I might have to look into that. After the adze, I wonder what the most efficient replacement(s) would be for the flap disk (for fairing our divots) so I could eliminate the grinder from the process all together.

[Andrew Nemeth]

Thank you Fredrick!