Ripping 8/4 walnut. A good rip saw comes in handy for jobs like this.

Rough shaft. I planed this down to smooth and square with a #7 plane. All said and done, it ended up about 3/4″ x 1 1/2″ at the top and it tapers down to 3/4″ by 3/4″ at the bottom.

Marking out a rough design for the handle.

Made relief cuts. What I learned is that you want to make sure to make a cut right at the apex of your arc. That’s where the grain changes direction relative to the cut you’re making so when you come back with the chisel, if you have not made a relief cut at that point, you’ll end up splitting off more wood than you want.

Some very careful chisel work. Not shown: the first try that split all the way through and now lives in the trash.

After some more careful chisel work and a little rough rasping.

After about 30 minutes of some finer rasp work and some filing.

On to the shaft. I hit the corners with a #4 smoothing plane to get the rounding started. I decided to keep the rectangular shape but round the corners quite a bit.

After that, I hit the corners at various angles with the spokeshave. This job could be done exclusively with the #4 or the spokeshave or even a rasp.

Boring the hole for the dowel joint. The handle got the same treatment.

Weirdest glue up ever. None of these are very tight, just enough to keep the handle seated firmly.

To finish, I went through sand paper grits from 100 to 150 to 220.

Then I used my own Danish oil recipe, nothing complicated. 1/3 Mineral Spirits, 1/3 Boiled Linseed Oil, and 1/3 Polyeurethane.

It got a few coats of this at first to soak the wood, then a few more with a bit of sanding at 500 grit in between. Depending on how it dries up after several days, it might get more of this finish.

Jointing the pieces. The cedar was leftover from a previous project so I had to plane off the stained areas as well.

The laminations. I needed 3 pieces over 10″ wide as I wanted to do 10″ wide for the tops and 8″ tall for the legs. The legs were to have a taper in them as well so they needed to be closer to 14″ wide.

Using a knife wall to cut the pieces to length.

Planing the cut down to the knife wall for a perfect endgrain.

I used a scrap piece of cardboard to freehand the arc for the legs and transferred that to the piece.

After a very rough cut with a crappy coping saw, I used the spokeshave to get a clean, smooth edge on the arc.

First dovetail cut and fitted. This is my first non-practice dovetail and cedar is a soft wood so these are a little rough.

Both dovetails done and fitted. Time to glue up!

I used way more clamps than I ever thought possible. The weird angled ones were to work the legs back into square.

The stool got sanded, the gaps in the joints got filled with glue and sawdust, and it got several coats of boiled linseed oil.

My man Titus with his stool

Built a frame out of left over SPF. I would’ve like to do this out of cedar but didn’t have anything long enough. I made it exactly 12″ wide so I could wrap the long sides with cedar and have them butt into the legs. You’ll see what I mean later.

I was a little bit concerned about a 6′ span for 2×4″ SPF but its not meant to last forever and its what I had so I’m happy with it.

Marking the arc of the legs. I used a spare piece of cardboard to freehand and tweak the arc until I liked it.

Cutting the arc. No bandsaw or even jigsaw for me 🙁

I cleaned up the arcs with the spokeshave. Here are the 4 finished legs. They turned out similar enough for me.

Skipping a few steps…

I attached the legs using screws, from the inside of the frame into the legs. I attached them flush with the top of the frame.

The bandboard around the frame is ripped cedar pieces screwed in from the back.

The top pieces are attached with nails.

Looking at the feet, I ended up needing to attach the two legs together with a block. This also helped make the legs sturdy.

I finished the whole thing with a couple coats of boiled linseed oil. We’ll see how it holds up!