… To Go Wrong.

It was bound to happen eventually, but I started making some fatal mistakes on the stool.

When I started drilling my first stretcher hole in one of the legs, apparently the clamps on the V-block weren’t strong enough: the leg rotated, and my hole ended up completely wrong. I also learned that my 5/8″ brad point bit is far too dull for how infrequently I’ve used it.

I got better clamps, drilled a successful practice hole in the ruined leg, and turned a replacement leg.

I managed to drill the four legs successfully, so I moved on to the stretchers. I originally turned them out of green wood, and after a year of sitting around they’re really wobbly. I did an adequate job cutting the tenons to size, using a sharpened box-end wrench; unfortunately this left them a bit oversized, so I probably won’t do that again.

Then, I cut the stretchers to length. Of course,when I say “to length” I mean to the wrong length, otherwise this wouldn’t be worth writing home about.

It turns out that the depth gauge on my folding rule makes a really excellent tool for measuring the inside distance between the legs. Brian Cunfer had a special shop-made tool for this, but I bet he could be using his folding rule instead.

However, it also turns out that the fixed-length segments on the folding rule aren’t 6″ long, they’re 7″ long. So my side stretchers are an inch too short.

Next: turning new stretchers, drilling them, and then gluing it up. I’m still “almost there” despite the setbacks.