Making the Split Stool
As a woodturner my experience with furniture making usually revolves around making components for other designers. Often the parts I make are basic shapes with the clean lines we commonly see in modern furniture. These jobs are fun and still present a challenge, but I had been craving something more interesting and involved.
Design development
A few years ago I decided to design a comfortable modern stool that made use of the split turning technique normally seen used for furniture ornamentation and crafty wooden baubles. My own spin on this technique was to use 120° segments for a three-way split, rather than the two or four-way splits I’ve seen in the past. This led to the development of my Split Stool with the latest version being the 760mm bar stool height version seen here.
I’ve used American ash for this build as it’s an easy timber to work with and I had plenty of off-cuts from previous jobs. It turns very cleanly and has nice straight grain which was important for this piece
Turning the legs
shows the 120° segment we will be cutting out. I put a ripping blade in my track-saw and set it to 30° to cut these pieces. You can also do this on
