♪ I spend most of the time in my shop standing at my workbench, but there are some tasks where it helps to just be able to have a place to sit down and rest, so on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're building a shop stool.

It has an adjustable height seat so it can suit the task at hand, and it has some really cool shop-made hardware.

Why don't we get things started?

Narrator: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953."

♪ Additional funding provided by... Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

♪ ...and by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly.

Providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

...and by... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ You know, as much as I like working at my workbench, on long shop days, it's nice to be able to sit down.

That's right, and the only problem that I found is that whenever I find a stool that works at my bench, it doesn't work at other things in my shop, like my countertop I have set up in there, or if I want to sit at my sharpening station, it doesn't work.

So I like kibbled the design elements on this stool because it's just adjustable.

Yeah.

We have a pretty cool piano stool kind of mechanism in there that allows you to just spin the seat to raise it and lower it, which works really well and really smoothly.

Exactly, and it gives you, what, probably 6 inches of movement, so you can use it in a wide range of settings in your shop, which is really cool.

Yeah.

And moving on from there, we have a nice footrest, and you'll end up making that yourself with a pretty simple bending technique, and it's a nice place to rest your feet so as you're working, you know, you can put your feet underneath you, and it's comfortable.

And it gives it a cool element to it because it's -- With the steel, it's going to take on an aged appearance, maybe get some rust spots on it, unless you protect it, but I think it just adds to the shop look of it.

Exactly, and we built this one out of red oak, but I think today we'll maybe use beech to make ours.

Yep.

It works really nicely.

It's straight grain.

It's strong.

Plus, it turns really well, and I think I'm going to turn the seat on this.

Yeah, and speaking of turning, I'm going to try a different technique instead of using a steel hardware system, going with some wood threads to just keep an all-wood version.

Exactly, and of course you could do exactly like the plans say, and if you'd like plans for a starting point for your stool, they're available on our website, woodsmithshop.com.

All right, I'm going to get started on the base.

The starting point for our stool project is to make a set of four legs.

Now, since these legs aren't just straight, there's no way that you can just go over to the table saw and cut them to size, but I do want the four legs to be as closely matched as possible, so rather than lay out each leg size and then cut it out and sand it smooth, what I did first was took a little bit of time to make a template out of some 1/4-inch hardboard.

Now, this template is going to serve me in a couple of ways.

The starting point is by using it to lay out the shape of the leg on my blanks.

Now, I found a board that was wide enough that I can get at least two of the legs out of here.

So, after positioning the template on the blank, I can trace around it with a pencil and then get my two leg pieces out of this.

With that done, I can take this blank over to the band saw and cut the legs to their rough size.

Now, you don't need to be real fussy here on trying to cut real close to the layout lines.

In fact, you'll want to stay just a little bit to the outside as you're cutting.

That way you can clean things up a little bit later and not worry about making your legs too small.

From there, I'm going to take the template again, and I'm going to attach it to one of the leg blanks that I've cut out with some double-sided tape.

Then it's a trip over to the router table where I've installed a flush trim bit.

Now, that flush trim bit is going to follow along the template and trim the wood blank to its final shape and size.

Makes things really simple and easy.

Flush trimming the legs to their final shape leaves a pretty smooth edge.

It's still going to take a little bit of finish sanding, though.

Before coming back over here to the bench, though, the last thing that I did was to take one final stop at the band saw where I cut a notch on the top ending of the leg.

Now, that notch is going to register the legs on a support block, and that's what we're making next.

Now, here's what the final support block looks like.

It's a two-part assembly that holds the mechanism for the adjustable seat.

Now, making it starts with gluing up a shorter, smaller, lower block and then a slightly larger upper block.

Now, since the combined height of both of these pieces is a little too much for most Forstner bits, what I did is drilled the holes in each section separately, then, at the band saw, I can clip the edges here.

You can see what this looks like on the finished block.

It really just lightens up the look of the support block, so there's nothing really precise here.

Just cut the chamfers and then sand them smooth.

At that point, you can glue the two pieces together.

Just make sure that the holes stay perfectly aligned as the glue dries.

Now, that hole is sized to accept the threaded stem block that fits inside of it for the assembly.

You can just press that into place, and then it's held in with some screws.

Threaded into that is a threaded section that the seat gets attached to later on once Logan makes it.

Now, for this other block, I want to take a different route here, and instead of using a premade metal hardware kit, I'm going to cut some wood threads.

When you're cutting threads in wood, there's really two operations that you're considering.

First is cutting threads on the inside of a hole, and then the second is cutting outside threads around a wood dowel.

Now, to do this, you're going to need a special piece of equipment, and that's a wood threading kit.

There's two parts here.

One part is the metal tap that will cut the threads on the inside of our support block.

Then there's also a thread box which does the same thing except cutting the outside threads on the dowel.

Now, for me, it's always a good idea to start with cutting the inside threads first because then I can fine-tune the settings on the thread box to get a good fit on the dowel.

Now, when you're doing this on the inside threads, there's a couple of things to keep in mind.

First, you want to size the hole accurately, and those are all included in the plans and the instructions for the threading kit.

Second is, it's a good idea to chamfer the edge of the hole just to prevent any tearout from when the threads start cutting.

The threading process is pretty simple.

All you do is maintain a nice, even pressure downward, and then the only thing you need to consider is, as you're getting started, is keeping that tap handle perfectly perpendicular to your workpiece.

Then it's just a matter of twisting it clockwise down into the workpiece.

Every revolution or so, it's a good idea to back up the tap just to break the chip and to prevent any tearing as you're going in.

♪ ♪ Okay.

There's a little elbow grease involved.

I'm not going to lie, but once you get all the way through, I find that it helps to run the tap through the threaded hole one or two more times just to clean up those threads, and then I'm going to get things changed out here, and we'll use the thread box to cut the outside threads.

Cutting the second part of the threads around the outside of a dowel goes a little bit easier than cutting the inside threads.

Like I said before, here you're going to use the thread box.

Now, there's a couple of things to keep in mind.

There's a bushing on the bottom of the thread box that has a hole that you can use as a gauge when you're selecting your dowel.

Now, you want to choose a dowel that is going to slide through that bushing pretty easily.

If necessary, you can sand the dowel so that it fits through.

The other thing that you want to consider is making sure that the dowel is pretty straight.

If there's any warp or a bend in it, that's going to cause problems when you go to cut the threads.

Now, for the dowel that I'm using, I like using maple because it has such a smooth, even grain consistency to it so that it's going to cut smoother, crisper threads in it.

Now, speaking of crisp threads, the "V"-shaped cutter on the inside of the thread box can get dull, so I like to start every session just by pulling that out and then sharpening it up on some water stones or oil stones.

That way it's going to cut smoothly and leave smoother, crisper-looking threads.

Now, like using the tap, what you want to do to get things started is to apply firm pressure downward as you slowly begin to rotate the thread box around.

You can begin to feel the cutter start to form those threads, and then what you'll need to do, like before, is every revolution or so, back things up like a half a turn to clear away any of the chips that are inside, and I've also marked the location of how far down I want to go on my dowel.

Then you're just working your way down in a slow, steady rate.

So here we go.

♪ ♪ ♪ And when you wrap up cutting the threads, what I like to do is back the thread box up and then thread it down again, and that'll help clean up the look of the threads.

Now, one thing you want to consider is that you shouldn't be surprised if some of the threads break out in a couple of places, but when you consider how long the threaded section is on the support block plus the threads on here, it's a lot of surface area, so you don't have to worry about ruining the piece.

When I install the seat on the stool, it's a good idea to rub on a few coats of paste wax just to keep things moving smoothly.

Now, once I'm done with this, we can do a little bit of assembly on the base part of the stool.

To wrap up my portion of this project, all I needed to do was attach the legs to the support block.

To do that, we drilled some pilot holes with some counterbores for a pair of screws for each of the legs.

Now, later on, when we're ready to finish up this project, we'll cover those screw holes with some matching wood plugs to disguise everything, but for now, it's time to build a seat.

♪ So, when it comes to making the seat for your stool, you have a couple different paths you can take.

Now the plans we're going to call out getting a big blank all glued up and laying out a circle, and then you can use a circle jig here at the band saw to cut it out.

Once you have that done, a trip to the router table to cut a couple round-overs and some sanding, and you'll be done, but I've been doing a lot of turning lately, and a round seat like this just screams to throw it on the lathe and turn it, so that's what I'm going to do.

So the first thing I've done is I've glued up my blank, and I have the circle laid out for the seat shape, and I'm going to cut that out, and I'm not going to worry really about it being perfectly square because once I get it mounted to the lathe, I'll go ahead and turn it true before cutting all the profiles.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and get this cut out.

♪ ♪ All right.

So now that we have our blank all cut out, we can go ahead and get it ready to mount on the lathe.

I'm going to do that with a face plate.

We can go ahead and position that roughly centered, and I'm basically just centering the middle mark from the compass when I drew out my layout lines, and I'm looking through the hole in that faceplate, and I'm just looking for it to be roughly centered.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

I know this is going to be a little unbalanced when I mount it, and we'll take care of that, but then I can just screw this into place.

There we go.

Now, this guy is just going to spin onto the spindle on the lathe.

There we go.

All right.

So let's talk about the tools I'm going to be using to turn the seat.

Now, most people are familiar with high-speed steel tools, which basically look like a bench chisel with a standard bevel on them, but I'm not going to use that here.

I'm going to use what's called a cutting system.

What this is, is it's a handle with a set of three interchangeable heads that you can swap out, and each of the heads has a different profile.

Now, the two we're going to be using here are going to be the square head and the round head.

I'm going to use the square head to quickly remove the stock from the outside and balance the blank.

Then I'll switch over to the round head for my final cuts and to round over the corners and dish out the seat.

Now, you'll notice on these heads, there are little carbide inserts.

That means they don't really cut.

They are more of a scraper action.

So, on this blank where the grain turns a direction and I'm cutting in the in grain, it is going to tear it a little bit, but I'm going to be able to control that mostly by using the round head scraper and making light passes, and that'll tame most of the tear out.

Now, I'm probably going to have a little more sanding than I would with high-speed steel, but honestly, sanding on the lathe really doesn't bother me.

So I'm going to go ahead and get these loaded up, get my apron on, and we'll get turning.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So there we go.

Turning that is pretty easy.

I went ahead and balanced the blank, rounded the edge, and then dished out the front.

So now we're ready to finish it.

There's one thing I like to do before I finish.

That is to grab a handful of the shavings and really give this a good burnishing while the lathe is running.

It just kind of polishes everything up and makes it ready for the finish.

And for the finish I'm going to use on here, I'm just going to grab a block of beeswax, and I'll rub that on while the lathe is running, and then I'm going to grab this pad, and I'm going to hit that wax that's on the running blank, and it's going to melt it in, and it's going to look great, and then it's ready to mount to your stool.

♪ ♪ ♪ Well, it's time for us to make the metal brackets, and we need four of them, and they each go around the base of our shop stool.

They provide a good place to set your feet, and they really add a lot of rigidity to the overall structure.

Now, these brackets are made of 1/8- by 1 1/4-inch steel, and there's nothing hard about working with steel.

You just need to approach it the right way.

Now, the first thing I'm going to do is go ahead and cut four pieces at 14 1/2-inch long.

I'm going to go ahead and lay out a bending line for our first bend, and I'll drill a hole in each end for the bolts that attach our bracket to each leg of the stool.

Now, when we go to the drill press and drill these holes, a couple things to remember.

One is you want to mark the location of the hole using a center punch.

Two, because this is a large diameter bit, it's very important that we securely clamp the metal down so it doesn't lift and doesn't spin, and make sure you use a little bit of oil, as well, and with that, drilling a half-inch hole through steel is easy.

Well, with that done and with a mark for our bend, I've got a piece of steel in my vise.

One thing to check when you put the steel in the vise is to make sure that it's square.

If the bend is off, it's going to make our brackets a poor fit onto the legs of the stool.

So what I'm going to do first is just take a scrap block of wood, and I'm going to take a the largest hammer I've got in the shop, and I'm going to go ahead and start with a 90-degree bend, and as I proceed with that bend, I'll probably switch to my steel hammer and hit the steel directly, but for now, we use a block, big hammer.

♪ ♪ With the bends in our brackets complete, the next step is going to be to form the gentle radius in each bracket.

Now, to do that, we need a pattern.

I've drawn on this piece of plywood a line with a radius of 8 1/16 inches, and that's the outside radius of each bracket.

To form our curve, I've opened my vise up just a little bit, and we're going to hook the end of the bracket into the vise, and I'm going to start making small incremental bends.

So we're going to form our radius not through one bend but through many small bends.

I'm going to kind of lean back on the steel, and when I feel it give, I'll stop, and I'll drop the piece about a 1/2 of an inch in the jaws of the vice.

I'm going to lean back and bend it just a little bit more, and we'll progress little by little bending our steel.

Now, periodically, we'll want to take it out to the vise and see how it fits against our pattern.

So I see that I can probably use a little more bend right here, but that's fine.

I can always go back to the vise and incrementally, in the same small amounts, put more bend, add more radius, and conversely, I can take it out, so it's a slow process.

We check it against our pattern, back to the vise, back and forth.

When I complete one half of my bracket, I'm going to flip it around and start the same process from the other end.

♪ Well, that's the last hole to attach all the brackets onto the legs of the stool.

Now, if you'll notice, I've put a backing block behind my hole, and that's just going to prevent blowout as the bend accents.

Well, one question is, you know, how do we locate the holes for the brackets.

Well, what I did was just to take each bracket and hold it in place, and I found sort of a sweet spot where it fit just right.

You know, in my case, the holes are located 5 inches down from the bottom of these legs.

It may be a little bit different on your stool, so with all my holes drilled, I'm now ready to go ahead and bolt the brackets in place.

Well, I think one of the best parts about using the beech, in addition to its really cool grain pattern, is the color that it takes as soon as you put finish on it.

Exactly, you know what?

I think beech is one of those woods that is underappreciated, underused.

You know, a lot of people see it as a utility wood, but I honestly really like the grain.

It looks good, it's straight grain, and some of the quarter sawn faces really turn out nice once you add the finish.

Yeah, and whether you're using hand tools or turning it or power tools, it just shapes really easily without a lot of scorching or tearing or...

Exactly.

You know, and it does turn very well, too, and when you apply a finish like the beeswax that I used on the stool seat, it just -- it glows.

It really looks nice.

Yeah.

So this project ended up being a really great contrast to the oak one that we started with, and if you'd like to build a version of your own, plans are at our website, woodsmithshop.com.

And I really like how the metal looks with it, too.

Exactly, you know the best thing is now we can get rid of that other stool we use for our round tables.

Right.

Get rid of the log stool.

I like to use rare Earth magnets for shop jigs and even for shop-made catches for doors and drawers.

The thing is though I need to create a recess using a Forstner bit that matches the depth of the rare Earth magnet.

They can be kind of goofball numbers, so it's hard to get a good reading with a ruler, but I found a simpler solution.

What I'll do is install the Forstner bit in my drill press, and then lower it down and press it in until the flat lifters are flush with the surface of my workpiece.

Then I can take the rare Earth magnet, put it on the bottom of the drill press depth stop, then lower the adjustable portion of the stop it'll it touches.

Now, I'll just left up, peel the magnet away, and now when I make the recess, it's going to be the exact size that I need.

♪ ♪ We've been calling our project today a shop stool, but I think that if you made a set of these, they would look great around a kitchen island, and I'd like to see what you come up with for changes that you'd want to make to your own design, and when you're through with that, we'll come back right here for another project in the woodsmith shop.

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Sign up at woodsmithshop.com Everything in today's show comes from the newly-expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to woodsmithshop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet or mobile device.

For more information, go to woodsmithshop.com.

Narrator: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

♪ Additional funding provided by... Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

♪ ...and by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly.

Providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

...and by... ♪