Number 24

Well, I can't make much money making stools in the US of A, so I'm off early in the morning to look for a teaching job in Thailand. This stool will be the last of this series, though I may well make stools in Thailand, also -- as I did in Laos, where I first came up with this design, and made 26 stools. I kind of enjoy making them, to tell the truth.

A couple of the stools I made in Laos.

The stool pictured below is for sale for $65. My son Bob is now the owner of these stools, and if you're interested in buying any, you can get in contact with him, at doc_hyde_md@yahoo.com.  Or, you can email me at lewagner2002@yahoo.com, or inquire through the comments section of this blog.
For general information about this series of stools, and a list of stools that are still available for sale, please check out the Introduction.
The pictures below aren't the best, but I'll try to re-do this page once I get an Internet connection in Thailand.

Number 23

I notice it's been over 4 weeks since I posted a new stool on this blog. There's been a lot going on! Nevertheless, I'm still kicking, and finally finished another stool. 

I'm still working using a kitchen counter and a living room floor as my "work-bench", but doing it this way I get a lot of good stretching exercises in my arms, shoulders, legs and back. All the stretching exercises make me sore, and all the extra moving around at least doubles the time it takes to make a stool ... but I don't think I'll be here long enough to warrant building a work-bench in the living room.

I'm still using up those boards with the red and blue paint that I found half-buried last summer. I previously made two stools using these boards as seats, and apple-wood for the legs and bracing: #4, and #12, (both already sold).
With this stool, I'm using up the last of the scorched maple I did last summer over an open fire.
As with all the other stools in this series, every joint is tightly reinforced with steel wire, meaning that the joints will not work loose, as traditional dowel joints eventually do. These stools are both light and tight.
Below are a couple of pics of the finished stool, plus a picture of several of the other stools in "review".
This stool is for sale for $65. (Sorry, this stool is already sold.)
If interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email, at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. For general information about these stools, and for a full list of the stools that are still available, please see the Introduction.

Number 22

This stool was made out of the same old lumber that stool #2 is made of. Back then I called the wood "Douglas Fir", but I'm going to hedge a little on the wood variety, and admit that I really have no clue what kind of wood this is. It's a fairly soft wood, yet evidently something that doesn't rot easily -- the green paint looks ancient, and the wood was just lying in the grass when I found it this spring, some of it almost buried in the dirt. Despite that, there was very little rot to scrape away. Compare with the seat from stool #19, which is made of pine. Judging from the condition of the paint, I don't think that wood is nearly as old as this wood.

 Notice that my current workbench doubles as a kitchen counter ... It works fine, as long as I keep most of the sawdust out of the food. Not that it would hurt anything, it's just kind of hard to chew.

Anyway, the wood grain is really nice on this stool. If you click on the pictures, you can enlarge them for a closer look. And, like all the other stools in this series, the joints are reinforced by being tied with wire. They don't come loose with use, and they're guaranteed strong.
This stool is for sale for $65. If you're interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. For general information about these stools, including a list of stools that are still available, please see older posts, and the Introduction.

Number 21

When I first visited this apartment I'm living in now, there was a huge 3 X 4 foot picture frame leaning against the living room wall, with a picture of an elephant, with a large, square hole cut out of the elephant's head. The picture looked as though it was made to fit the frame, but it wasn't really in the frame, just kind of leaning there ... and then, besides that, there was that big hole in the elephant's head. I wanted to ask, and in fact, did finally ask, "Why don't you throw that stupid picture away? Or at least put it in another room, so everybody won't be asking, 'Why is there a big hole in the picture?'"

Yep, that's a real parrot under the picture of the wounded elephant.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago when I moved in here, the picture was missing from the living room, (which made the living room look much less puzzling). Then I saw the picture-less frame crookedly leaning in the kitchen corner, next to the refrigerator. 

"There's some wood you can make a stool out of," my son said.

Well, since most of the wood I spent the summer collecting is still in that old trailer in my sister's neighbor's yard 20 miles out in the country, not readily accessible to me, I figured that my son was right. 

I took the frame out from the corner and looked more closely at it. It was made out of a fairly soft pine that had been run through a planer/shaper. There were actually 8 pieces of wood, two stapled together lengthwise on each side of the frame. The smaller lengths were covered with a kind of cloth tape, and the whole frame was painted dark brown. 

I knocked the frame apart, removed the staples, and decided to remove the cloth. When I did, I found that the wood underneath had been painted a light blue-green color before the tape had been applied. 

And when I did some sanding on the larger lengths, I found that they too had been painted the same blue-green color. Finally, everything, tape and wood, was all painted brown together, after the frame was assembled. There was a stamp on the unpainted back of the frame, "HECHO EN MEXICO". I'm guessing by the frame's construction that it was hechoed in a fairly small wood-shop/factory sometime during the '70's or '80's, by some darned good craftsmen -- but their work was undone by me, during September 2012.

I cut some pieces to length for legs and a seat, did some hatchet-work to split some of the larger pieces for the bracing, and I made a stool, modified Mexican style, here in Minnesota.

This stool is for sale for $65. If interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. For general information on these stools, more pictures, and a list of which stools are still available, please see older posts, and the Introduction.

    

Number 20

Stool Number 20 is the first one I've done completely in a city apartment. It's made of what we call popple, what the hoity toities refer to as "quaking aspen".
The wood came from a huge tree that was too near a friend's house out in the country, and leaning in the direction of the house. By use of a rope tied high up the tree, a large pulley tied to another tree, a John Deere A tractor, and skillful notching on my friend's part, the tree was brought down exactly as planned -- right between two other trees that were to be saved, and at just the right angle that it didn't go out over the road.
I was there to shout advice, help trim branches and load the trailer, and as I did so, I asked for a few pieces of wood for myself.

The picture above is of my grandson posing in my new work-space, in the living room of the apartment.

The seat is made of a larger piece of popple, split with a hatchet to make rough boards, then sanded.

 I had a heck of a time attaching the stool together without making hammering noises in the apartment building. I got it done, though, without any major complaints. I went downstairs a couple of times and used the concrete floor in the back entrance of the building, so I wouldn't be pounding on the ceiling of the apartment of the downstairs neighbors.
The picture to the right is of all the wood and sticks I used to have stored in my former work-place. I had all the wood there sorted by variety, but in moving it to the neighbors' place, then piling it inside an old trailer, it got all mixed up, and is now pretty much a jumbled mess. I'm still glad to have it, though it's about 20 miles from here, and not quite as convenient as it used to be.
What's left of the popple is to the right of the picture. For the next stool I make out of popple, I plan to cut one of the large pieces to about 17 inches, then split it with the hatchet for legs, seat, and bracing. The grain is quite straight on the trunk of this old tree.
This stool, however, except for the seat, was made from the branches of the tree, which were not straight, and which split into some really interesting shapes.
As all the other stools, the joints are nailed, then tied with strong wire, so they won't work loose as traditional doweled and glued joints eventually always do. These stools are both light in weight, and exceptionally strong.
This finished stool pictured in two pics below, is for sale for $65. (Sorry, this stool is no longer available for sale.) For further information, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com.
For general information on these stools and more pictures, please see older posts, and the Introduction to this blog.

Number 19, Continued

Finally got moved into the apartment, and yesterday went out in the country to retrieve the stools from the old car. Here are a few pictures of stool Number 19 -- referred to but not pictured in its finished form in the previous post -- plus pictures of the other stools that are still available, now in their urban setting.

 The pictures below are of six of the stools that are still available, plus one in the left rear of the last picture, that I'm working on now to become Number 20. I hope to have that finished soon ...
These stools are for sale at $65 each. If you're interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. For general information about these stools, and more pictures, please see the Introduction to this blog, and previous posts.

Number 19

Well, I've gone through a fair amount of drama last week, but still managed to complete a stool. It's made of sumac wood again, from a neighbor's yard.

This is the same wood I used in stool #10, which is already sold. I link you to the blog entry for that stool so you can see example pictures, since I don't have any pictures of the finished stool #19, only pictures of the seat while I'm working on it. And, you can see two of the sides of the stool already finished, behind the unscraped boards, on the far upper left of the picture, below.

 I started with some old pine boards which had been lying out in the grass deteriorating for several years. I scraped off all the soft deteriorating wood, using a knife point, a nail, a wire brush, sandpaper, finger-nails, etc., and converted the wood on the left above into the wood on the right and below. Kind of like turning water into wine, or something like that, except it took me a couple of days to do it. (I'm turning some apples into wine, too, by the way, but that will take a few months.)

Here are a couple of pictures of the boards just about ready to mount onto the stool sides taken at two different camera settings -- there will be one more board, not yet shown.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to take any pictures of the finished stool before writing this blog entry, and also unfortunately, I'm no longer able to use the garage I was using to make my stools. The half-dozen completed-but-not-yet-sold stools are now stored in the shelter of an old car parked in a field, and the pile of sticks and other wood I've peeled, prepared and had stored inside that garage are now in a 2-wheeled trailer in the same field, under the protection of a blue plastic tarp.

The owner of the garage "Needs [her] privacy!" and doesn't want the garage "All full of wood and sticks!!" anymore.
Right now, I'm living in an apartment in Duluth, and most of my stuff is still in Munger, but hopefully I'll soon have a place where I can continue making and selling these stools. Hey, I kind of need the income, if you know what I mean.
This stool is for sale for $65. If interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. For general info and more pictures please see older posts, and the Introduction to this blog.

Thanks!