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Eight-legged Stools
Every one has a story.

Stool #4: Red Oak with a walnut stripe in center and two edges - legs ALL red oak.

Stool #4
Fourth Stool

Sometimes the process of preparing pieces of wood to glue them together (making them perfectly flat and square) takes off more wood than I expect leaving the width shorter than the length. In this case I fixed the problem by adding two contrasting bands of walnut to each side before cutting into the final octagon shape. (a technique I will use often in the future)


4th stool
before polyurethane

One of the most exciting things about working with this wood is when you apply the first coat of finish. It's like turning on a light. All the woodgrain and the natural colors of the wood spring to life and definition and character of the wood becomes visible for the first time .


Side Note: The pieces for this stool were sitting in my workshop and ready assemble when I learned that I had bladder cancer. During the days after my first chemo treatment, I needed something to take my mind off the how crappy I felt and how scared I was about how much crappier I might feel as the hours passed and the anti-nausea drugs wore off. My mother always said that doing some repetitive task (like milking the cows or working the fields ) is a good way to focus your mind on the task and force your problems and concerns into the background. Assembling these stools requires careful attention to the process in order to get everything aligned and straight. After assembly, the multiple sanding passes (progressively finer grade paper) is tedious and time consuming. It turned out that this was an Ideal distraction from the side effects of chemo. The hours I spent working on these two stools (and cutting pieces for the next two) helped me get through the three months of chemo leading up to my operation.