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!

Number 10

My neighbor has a nice grove of Staghorn Sumac behind his house, so I asked permission to cut a couple of sticks to take a look at it.

Unsplit, the wood with the bark removed is just a nondescript white color, interesting only because it often crooks off at an angle. However, it splits easily, and usually right down the middle, or close to it.

 

Once the wood is split, it shows lots of color. The center contains a very soft orange pith, which is easily scraped out, leaving a hollow, which shows a little darker than the olive-green grain of the rest of the wood.

 I didn't get back to my neighbor's house for about a week, and I was just itching to get some more of that wood, which I finally did. 
 The wood is rather brittle and hard to work with, so this stool took me a little longer and gave me a little more frustration than usual to complete. It seemed that even with all nail-holes pre-drilled, every time I tried to drive a nail, the wood would split, and the joints come apart ... but once all the joints are tied together with wire, the stool is almost incredibly tight and strong. The advantage of wire-tied joints is that if sometime in the far future a stool did start to loosen up at one joint or another, all it would take to re-tighten it would be to add another twist in the steel wire.

The seat of this stool is made of Western Fir, another of the old boards I found half-buried in the mud behind the garage this spring.
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. Reference: Stool Number 10. (Sorry, this stool is already sold.) For general info about these stools, please see Introduction.