Christmas gift footstool #1: Planing the rough wood and shaping the legs...

Well, two years ago my brother-in-law had decided Christmas was too commercial, so he insisted that we all make each others’ gifts the following year. We all had a good laugh and forgot about it. Come last November, the topic resurfaced in the form of a “reminder.” Apparently, they had been working on our gifts all last year. So while we received a very nicely oak-framed stone mosaic mirror, we returned a repurposed pillow that my wife had embroidered for someone else. I took lots of hours, and looked great, but we felt we had shortchanged my sister and her husband. So we insisted we try it one more year. My wife has stitched 2 panels (essentially small tapestry-like things) depicting orange trees, and I was to build the body of a footstool and we will put the two together for our gift.

Click here# to check out the pictures of this project.

The first picture shows the wood that I chose to use, before being surfaced. I didn’t know (as some others may not) that wood is delivered to those big box stores on pallets that are essentially the same type of wood. This means that luan plywood is normally delivered on pallets made from South American mahogany. This is what I chose to use. You sometimes have to hunt for good pallets, but the local store gave them to me for free. They are made from approx. 2”x4” and 2”x2” stock, true sizes (not nominal, because they haven’t been planed).

The second picture shows a planed piece. The sides of the footstool with be cut from this piece.

The third and fourth show shaped legs. I don’t have a router table, just a router, and without a quality plane (which I don’t have), shaping a hard wood like mahogany proved difficult. So I fashioned a quick router table (essentially a 1”x8” with a hole in it) and was able to cut about half of the shape. I chiseled out the rest on each leg. The last picture shows a leg halfway done, and you can see the ridge that still needs to be chiseled on the side. That’s all for now, I’ll post more when I get more work done.

-- Jeff in Meridian, MS