In order to fit the bow to the seat itself, I wanted to use floating walnut dowels. i.e. the dowel would fit into the ends of the bow and then into the seat. This jig enabled me to drill my holes in the bow as centrally and straight as I could:

Drilling the 350 angled holes into the seat was more tricky, but by making up some guide blocks, I was able to do some practice runs to get the angles right:

With a 35o home-made mitre box, I was able to bevel the ends of the bow and get the desired “fit.”

Now, I was ready for our week at The Windsor Workshop. It was good to see James Mursell and his wife, Louise, again, and to stay in their “Old Stables” cottage..

The seat bases were cut to size and marked up for the leg holes, which we drilled on the drill press and reamed to taper the through mortice for the matching papered legs tenons. Then it was on to shaping the seat, mostly by hand with a travisher and card scraper (with some power shaping by James using an Arbotech disk on an angle grinder to speed the second seat along).

By Friday, the legs and stretchers were fitted, with the footrests set to fit our differing leg lengths! It was time to fit the bows to the seat and drill and fit the spindles I had prepared.

Here is the final result, better than I had dared to hope, and with many thanks to James for his allowing me to join his own barstool course, for helping me create these stools – and thus fulfil a dream.

Thomas Moser-designed Bowback Bar Stools in walnut and ash.