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 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 17

A guy was walking in the woods one day and came upon this other guy squatted down in front of a campfire, holding a stick into the fire as if he were roasting a weenie, or a marshmallow. But upon closer inspection, the first guy noticed that there wasn't anything on the end of the second guy's stick -- and then the end of the stick caught on fire. The second guy quickly pulled it out of the fire and blew out the flame. He looked carefully at the stick, then turned it around with a chuckle, and stuck the other end of it into the fire, still with not a weenie or marshmallow on site.
The second guy would be me, roasting maple sticks to make stools out of, trying to make a buck, you know.

The scorched maple stools seem to be popular, so I'm trying to make as many as I can until I run out of maple to scorch. Seems as though this will be the second to the last one, unless I find some extra time to cut, debark and scorch some more maple sticks.

 The seat of this stool is made from pine pallet lumber, left over from the coffee table I made (previous post). I don't know what kind of pine this is, but it's as tough as can be.
(I'm hoping that eventually somebody reading this blog will know more about tree species than I do. I've got to admit, sometimes I've just guessed on what species of lumber I'm using, especially when it's reclaimed lumber. This has an aromatic pitch in it, though, so I'm saying it's some kind of pine.)
Anyhoo, I guess it's pretty much immaterial just what kind of wood it is you're sitting on, so long as it looks good, and is strong enough to hold you up ... and this stool is both. There are a couple of photos below.
It's 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 some general information about these stools, please see Introduction.

Number 12

This is another stool made of apple wood. There is a large tree of little green apples in the back yard, with lots of little trees coming up underneath it. These little brushy trees coming up make it difficult to get to the main tree, and don't add anything to apple production whatsoever. So I cut a couple of them out to make a stool with.

Last time I made a stool out of apple wood, I used wood from a tree in the front yard that has little red apples. As I peeled the bark off the wood from that tree, I was surprised to see that the inner bark was bright pink. Now this time as I peeled the bark off the wood from the tree with little green apples, I saw that the inner bark is bright green.
I considered stating this as a general principle about apple trees, that the color of the apple is determined by the color of the inner bark of the branches, and vice versa ... but I'd really be talking off the top of my head if I stated that as a general principle, since I've only looked at the inner bark of these two trees, not really enough of a sampling. After I sample a few more apple trees, and ask around for other people's experiences, I'll be sure to let you know.

Be that as it may, I looked in vain in my pile of old boards under my work table for any wood that was the color of little green apples for the seat of this stool. I did still have some pieces of pine boards left that had been painted red over a coat of blue paint, though. The back side of those boards had been painted white at one time. Red, White and Blue are the colors of the flag, of course, which everyone knows stands for mom and apple pie -- even if the pie is made of green apples, not red ones, and even if this is a stool, and not a pie.
This stool (two photos below) 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 12. (Sorry, this stool is already sold.)

 For general information about these stools, please see Introduction.