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 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 8

This stool is another one made of what we locally call "popple", or more properly,

"Aspen".
I had some branches left from the first popple stool I made, and basically only needed a seat. I took a couple of pieces of firewood about 4 inches in diameter, and split them with a hatchet to form some fairly regular split boards, which I used for the seat. Then there were some boards that didn't split off evenly but were bigger on one end and smaller on the other. Instead of using round branches for this stool's legs, I nailed 2 or 3 of these uneven pieces together to form slightly tapered legs.
The seat shows an interesting grain, as when popple is split right down the middle, the first year's growth is visible as a dark heart-wood, with the smallest branches visible as they first started growing.
Otherwise, this stool is not unlike its siblings: 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 8.
For general info about these stools, please see Introduction.

Number 3

One of our most common trees in Northern Minnesota we call "popple". The more correct name is "Quaking Aspen", but no northern Minnesota woodsman would be caught dead calling it THAT. It's "popple".
Popple is hard to burn when it's green because it's full of water, and it doesn't give a whole lot of heat even when it's dry. Nevertheless, there's so much of it, people who cut wood for heat usually do end up burning some popple.

 I helped my neighbor cut some wood this spring, and grabbed a few popple branches off the brush pile for this stool. The seat was constructed out of pieces that split as the trees cracked off.
I took advantage of the fact that I already had two stools constructed, and was able to sit on one stool as I peeled the bark for another one.

This stool is for sale for $65. If interested, please contact me in the comments section of this blog, or by email at lewagner2002@yahoo.com. Reference: Stool Number 3.  (Sorry, this stool is already sold.)
There are two pictures below, one taken indoors, and one outdoors.
For general info about these stools, please see Introduction.