{"id":1836,"date":"2025-03-13T17:22:47","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T17:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=1836"},"modified":"2025-03-13T17:22:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T17:22:47","slug":"starting-some-stools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=1836","title":{"rendered":"Starting Some Stools"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For a long time I have wanted to make a couple of Bowback Stools, as produced by Thomas Moser’s company in the USA: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.thosmoser.com\/product\/bowback-stool\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have previously made a Windsor Chair with James Mursell at the Windsor Workshop: https:\/\/thewindsorworkshop.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here it is with the desk I made for Sylvia:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We recently met James Mursell at a craft show, and he kindly agreed to help me make a couple of Bowback Stools on one of his 5 day Two Stool Making courses, and we have arranged a course in the spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I will be making a different stool than the rest of the group, I decided to do some preparatory work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly. I purchased a couple of Tom Moser’s book cheaply from on-line sites: “Thos. Moser’s Measured Shop Drawings” and “Thos. Moser’s Windsor Chairmaking.” From these I have seen able to obtain sufficient design details to reproduce the stool. The second of these has 1:5 scale drawings of the seat and the bow, and I have had these enlarged to full size at a local printers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hoping to get permission from the Thos Moser company for me to include here a couple of photos of the drawings in these books, but have not had a reply. I heard last week that, sadly, Tom Moser died on 5th March, aged 90. He leaves a great legacy of fine furniture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plans shows the angles for rake (forward and backwards angulation) and the splay (sideways angulation) of the legs and spindles. From these two angles I have used Peter Galbert’s layout method for converting the compound angles into the sightlines and their angles for drilling the holes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_i3Mnz8VTYM<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the leg of a stool is angled from a vertical position, the distance it moves across the floor gets greater per degree of angulation. It’s not simply a matter of a fixed distance per degree of angulation, as can be seen on the Taytools Bevel Setting Gauge” below. Peter Galbert’s technique and this bevel setting gauge makes the process very straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Having marked out the sightlines on the drawing, I needed to produce a template to create the shape of the seat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The seat drawing is not perfectly symmetrical, so I make a template of one half (using some stiff clear plastic sheet I obtained for templating parts of the dinghy I’m slowly building). By transferring the details of one half of the drawing, I was able to make the shape perfectly symmetrical by simply flipping the template over to do the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step is to define the shape and size of the bow. I made a drilling Jig to drill the correct angle and then fitted a length of 4mm diameter mild steel rod. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I then drilled the holes for the spindles and adjusted the bow to fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Using some card, I was able to take the shape of the bow and produce the former for the bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The template was not symmetrical so I chose one half and marked the wood accordingly, having adjusted the line to take account of the thickness of the bow. Using a batten, I faired the curve and extended the bottom of the line to provide some spare length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With on a pine board marked up ready to make a prototype seat, and the ‘former’ ready to make the bow, I moved on to preparing the wood for the two sets of components<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James would normally use ash for the stool parts, except for the seat; with ash, tulip wood, sapele frequently chosen for the seat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to use walnut for the stool’s seat, and for the bow – if you look at the Thos. Moser website, using the hyperlink above, I think you will appreciate why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike ash, walnut does not steam well, so I have decided to laminate the bow. If I am unsuccessful, we will at least have the ‘Former’ to steam bend some ash on day 1 of the course!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dimension given for the bow is 27mm. I made my laminate strips about 2-3mm thick and 40mm wide to allow for any mismatch when glued up. My attempt to laminate the bow in a single step failed – three of the eight strips broke at the same place, where there was a wave in the grain. As a result, I had to glue each laminate strip in turn! Here is one of the set ups with a few strips in place:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And here is one of the two completed laminations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After cutting the laminate off the former on the bandsaw. I planed the width and thickness down to the required 27mm. Using the 7:10:7 proportion rule I marked out the lines on each of the four faces to which I needed to plane off the corners (with a spokeshave) and make it eight sided. From there it was a fairly simple but careful task to shave off the resulting smaller corners and round off the bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the bows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I did cheat a little with the seat blanks – with my friend Matthew’s help and his surface planer we “jointed” the pieces to make the seat blanks. The stock I had bought was not quite wide enough to make the seats in one piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Three more steps are required before I’m all set for our Windsor Workshop trip: I shall transfer the shape, the hole positions and the sight lines for drilling to the two blanks, like the prototype above; fit walnut dowels into the ends of the bows make the “loose tenon”s” that will fit into the seat; and I need to make a jig to help create the 35o bevel on the ends of the bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah well, “back to the bunker!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time I have wanted to make a couple of Bowback Stools, as produced by Thomas Moser’s company in the USA: https:\/\/www.thosmoser.com\/product\/bowback-stool\/ I have previously made a Windsor Chair with James Mursell at the Windsor Workshop: https:\/\/thewindsorworkshop.co.uk Here it is with the desk I made for Sylvia: We recently met James Mursell at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1861,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions\/1861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}