Members' Gallery - Share Your Builds
Jef's Danish Stool
Finally finished it 10 months after starting it, a lot of stop-starting and numerous distractions aside. A challenging piece to get just right with all the compound angles, and Richard wasn't lying when he said you'll have no skin on your hands left after weaving the seat. The Danish paper cord is lovely stuff but hard to work with and really does strip your skin. Also, I discovered the hard way, it will actually break if you yank it hard enough, so take care you know the limits when tensioning it - i broke it half way through the main seat section, so had to engineer a tie-off and re-start which was quite fiddly to achieve without it looking really untidy. Lesson learnt! Also, tung oil takes forever to dry as soon as you go above a 50% ratio for the final coats- definitely a finish to apply in the hot summer months, not a manky October! Pretty pleased with it, glad its finally done, and might now get around to the spoon rack that was supposed to be my first project, 3 builds ago....
Jef's Danish Stool
Finally finished it 10 months after starting it, a lot of stop-starting and numerous distractions aside. A challenging piece to get just right with all the compound angles, and Richard wasn't lying when he said you'll have no skin on your hands left after weaving the seat. The Danish paper cord is lovely stuff but hard to work with and really does strip your skin. Also, I discovered the hard way, it will actually break if you yank it hard enough, so take care you know the limits when tensioning it - i broke it half way through the main seat section, so had to engineer a tie-off and re-start which was quite fiddly to achieve without it looking really untidy. Lesson learnt! Also, tung oil takes forever to dry as soon as you go above a 50% ratio for the final coats- definitely a finish to apply in the hot summer months, not a manky October! Pretty pleased with it, glad its finally done, and might now get around to the spoon rack that was supposed to be my first project, 3 builds ago....
Loved This Project
The angled tenons were a bit of a challenge as I was really trying my best to get a gap free fit on this project. I thought that the weaving was going to be a chore, but I really loved it. In fact, I'm looking at your Chair Basics Course right now and thinking about what it would be like to weave a larger chair seat. Hmmm, on second thought maybe I don't love weaving quite THAT much. We shall see.
My 3 Danish stools
Made 3 of them so far. The first one is pine with paracord. The second one is poplar, painted with General Finishes "Milk Paint" and paper cord. The last one is mahogany with General Finishes Enduro-VAR satin and paper cord as well. This one was a lot of fun, I changed up the stretchers to try something more advanced.
2nd stool
Made a second one for my mum, though chopped a side rail mortice in the wrong place, then after silently weeping on the ground for an hour did a ropey looking repair job and good as new(ish)! Got the seal of approval from the wee one though so can't be that bad!
Sore fingers
Great fun with this, next one will be much better though! Used macrame cord rather than Danish cord, but it was not fun to work with, tangling/unwrapping etc but gor there in the end! As Richard said I've got no skin left on me fingers!!
Fun with Handtools!
This was an attractive project to explore joinery with handtools! I used Ash with "Arid" color 425 paracord for the cord.
First attempt
Made with wood salvaged from a door given away on Freegle. Badly stained then varnished with water based poly. Not without a few minor errors on my part... but salvaged and pleased with the result. First time weaving. Thanks for the good instruction!
A good challenge
I really appreciated the design and difficulty of this build. And I don't think I would have attempted it without this series. Richard and Helen's videos make builds like this much more accessible; I would never have imagined weaving with Danish cord before this series. I did stumble here and there, particularly with the small tenon where we couldn't use the router. And a leg or two found their way into the wrong mortise at glue up, but the end result is a humble stool that my family seems to really enjoy.
Danish stool: I made it!
Thanks Richard and Helen, I learned SOOO much from this series! I'm still a beginner and many of the techniques in this video were outside my comfort zone: the angled mortices, the angled tenons, the through tenons, the compound angles, the curves, the weave, etc. Thanks to your amazing instruction and demonstration, I managed without struggling too much. It was hard (in a good way), but certainly not frustrating. I'm really happy with the outcome. The joints fit snugly and are virtually gap-less, the stool feels nice and is plenty strong enough to hold my weight as I sit on it. Here it is, on the workbench, 2 minutes after completing the weave (oops, we can still see the cord scraps in the photo). I'm honestly still surprised/amazed at how well it turned out and I can barely believe I made this. I would never have attempted a build of this complexity without this series. I think the hardest part for me was the angled tenons in chapter four. I had to restart these pieces several times to get all 4 tenons fit snugly with consistent angles. I was simply incapable of sawing them correctly and trying to correct them with a chisel only made things worse. I resorted to planing the ends with a variable angle shooting board and then using a magnetic 90 degree sawing guide and then the result was near perfect. I put off the weave for some time as was rather intimidating. In the end, it wasn't that hard. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit and now I kind of feel silly for having put this off for so long. I did struggle a bit with the paper cord, especially at the start. The cord snaps off surprisingly easily when bent around the nails or pulled too tight. I even cut one of the loops on the underside while driving the nails in at the very end, but I managed to tie it off with a an extra nail. It takes a bit of getting used to, but by the time I reached the final middle section, I was progressing with decent speed and no longer snapped the cord. I've said this before in my previous posts, but I truly feel more and more confident/empowered after each of these series. Building this stool suddenly makes me want to try building more chairs. Maybe I'll try your chair building series next :-)
My first real piece of furniture.
After making some boxes, I decided to challenge myself a bit and make myself a piece of furniture. I did the thicknessing by hand after that I bought a compact thicknesser. Doing the joinery was a lot of fun. Lesson 5 was a bit challenging, because it was a lot of info and work. I didn’t curve the side rails because I don’t have bandsaw and the experience to make these curves and roundings with a chisel. So I stayed save instead of ruining my work. I really enjoyed this build and I learned a lot of it.
Fun and challenging
I absolutely loved building this stool. It’s perfect for woodworkers that already have a bit of experience trying to learn new things. The fitting of the legs to a curved surface, whacking the tenons, fitting the through tenons, weaving: all new to me but perfectly doable. And as always, I loved the videos. I made a short video of the build myself: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CX2ALiBl9iT/
First try
The weaving was a bit rough. But the wife wants another to match so I’ll have a chance to improve.
Danish Stool project finished!
Had a blast completing my first English Woodworker project. Despite the delicate wooden frame the stool is surprisingly strong. Details, like the tapered legs, round overs and gentle curves, really make the difference and more interesting to look at from all angles. Using Richards techniques meant I made neat through mortises, all by hand, first time. The Danish cord weaving was fun and I’ll definitely use it again in a future project. Love the way the black cord looks in changing light. Have signed up for the industrial desk series and it’s my next project. Great job Richard and Helen!