Number 16

I haven't posted anything for two weeks already, mainly because I haven't finished a stool for two weeks. And the new one I just finished, made of alder, is already sold. Sorry. (Update, 9-6-12: Well, it turns out that this stool isn't sold, after all.) (Update, 9-8-12: Well, it turns out that this stool is sold, after all.)
Still, I thought I'd give this stool a number and a blog post, because it certainly deserves it as much as any other stool I've made. And, I'm always hoping that someone might see a stool they like and contact me to make another one similar to it. (Update, 9-6-12: Or, buy this one, and you won't have to wait!)
The legs and sides of this stool are made of round alder branches and twigs, about the same as other stools in this series.

But for the seat, I thought I'd try something different. I cut a larger alder branch, and since alder doesn't like to split in a straight line like sumac or popple will, I first cut the branch to the length of the seat (32 cm), then used a table saw to saw the pieces down the middle to make boards. I sawed them as flat as I possibly could, by cutting from one end half way, then from the other end. The little table saw I used isn't quite the same thing as a sawmill for sawing lumber, so the boards came out kind of rustic-looking, which was the plan from the beginning.
If I wanted to use perfectly square dimension lumber, I'd go to a lumber yard to buy it, instead of going out in the woods for it, and I wouldn't call these "rustic stools".  Eh?
Anyway, I sanded the rustic boards down smooth enough so they can be sat on comfortably, and nailed and wired everything together so it won't come apart even after years of use.
The pictures below are a couple of views of this stool upside-down, to show its construction in a little more detail. The next post will show some of the other stools from the bottom side up, and also a couple of pictures of a rustic table I've been working on.
As I said above, this stool is already sold. For general information about these stools, which ones are still available, pricing, etc., please see the Introduction.

Number 14

It's Monday already, and I'm just now getting a new stool up on the board, here. I was hoping to do one a day, then two a week, then one a week ... and now it's been 8 full days already. Maybe that means I should jack the price up on these things.
Nah, they're selling, but not like hotcakes, yet, so I'll stick to the $65 I started with.
For this stool, I thought I'd try something a little different. The legs and sides are made of 4 different colors of wood. There aren't four different kinds of wood, because actually, two of the colors are the same kind of wood. There's weathered popple (gray), unweathered popple (almost white), alder (reddish brown), and scorched maple (almost black), in that order -- unless you start with the black first. And the seat is made of a chunk of the riser of an ancient wooden ladder I found laying out in the woods as I was helping my neighbor haul scrap a couple of months ago. It was all covered with green moss on the outside, but sound as a dollar inside (even sounder, actually, ha ha ha.)

This time, I thought I'd add a couple of pictures of the actual construction process, before the stool was completely braced, wired, or varnished. As a friend of mine told me last week, "If you wouldn't have them tied together with wire, they'd look pretty amateurish -- like they're ready to fall apart if you so much as look at them wrong. That there looks like some old codger was in a shack out in the woods and wanted to make him something to sit down on, but didn't quite know how to do it."
Anyway, here are some pictures of the stool after it's finished. This stool is a perfect illustration of the old saying, "What goes around, comes around."

 And so on, 'round and 'round and 'round ...

This stool, its seat made of part of an ancient ladder, is also a good illustration of another old saying, "What goes up, must come down." I was thinking I could name this the "Karma stool".
It 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. (Sorry, this stool is already sold.) For general information about this series of handmade stools, please see the Introduction to this blog.

Number 9

Back when I started truck-farming, my field was over-grown with Alder-brush.

 Alder comes up from a central root, and spreads out in all directions, so it's hard to get at the base of it with an axe or chainsaw. Then, after all the multiple stems are cut, you still have to try to uproot the root of it, and when you do that, it sometimes jams into the plow and you have a heck of a time getting it out. There's no shortage of alder-brush in Northern Minnesota; it seems to come up everywhere.
For those reasons, I've always considered it a junk wood. I was surprised when my dad brought some over on the day he came to help me scrape maple. But when I noticed how easy alder was to peel compared with some other woods, and its interesting reddish-orange color after being peeled, I thought maybe it would be worth making a stool of.
When I split a length of it, it was even more interesting. When first split, the wood is almost white; but within less than an hour, it begins to change color to a nice salmon color.
The alder is the reddish-orange wood towards the back of this photo, just in front of the balsam.
It's just soft enough to drive a nail into without pre-drilling, but hard enough that it sands nicely without "fuzzing". I really like the looks of the stuff once it's out of the field, and no longer something to wrestle with, but something to sit down and rest on.
The seat is made from some of the pine boards I found on the brush pile behind the garden. It just happened to have been painted with a coat of off-white covered by a coat of reddish-orange, a perfect match for the alder stool.
Alder turns out to be one of the easier woods to work with. However, since I'm not charging more for the more difficult woods, I'm not charging less for the easier woods either. $65.
If interested, please contact me through the comments section of this blog. Or, by emailing me at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. Reference: Stool Number 9.  (Sorry, this stool is already sold.)
For general info about these stools, please see Introduction.