New Project: Footstool

One of the really cool projects that we do at school is a footstool with 4 different legs.  We are doing it in a workshop, so about half the people in the program are all working on it at the same time.  The idea is to learn how to do 4 different style legs in one project instead of 4 separate projects.  Plus, at the end you have a really cool and unique footstool.

My dad got me this awesome set of carving chisels as an early Christmas present so I could use them on the footstool.

The first one we worked on was the pad foot.  The foot and back of the ankle are turned on the lathe.

We then trace the patter on 2 sides of the leg.  We take it to the bandsaw where we cut along the pattern lines on one side.  Then we tape it back together and cut along the pattern lines on the other side.  This gives us the rough shape in this picture.

After faring the surface (smoothing off the saw marks) it is time to start shaping.  This leg is circular all the way from the bottom up to the knee.  We make it round using the 5:7 method that I described in my chamfer and quarter rounds post from last year.  The inner line on each side is the shape to line.  The outer 2 lines are the cut to lines.  I used my 1" bench chisel and my rasp to remove the material between the 2 lines closest to each corner creating an octagon.

After you have an octagon, you just have to knock off the corners, which creates a 16 sided shape, then a 32 sided one and eventually the facets become so small you can file/ card scrape/ sand them away and your leg is round.

The same principle applies on the foot, but is a little harder to do because the diameter changes much more quickly.

Here is the rounded leg.  It just needs a little cleaning up and it will be done.

This is the beginning of the slipper foot, roughed out on the band saw. 

The faring had to be be done really well, because this is the only leg that is not rounded.  I had to take the same amount off of each side to keep the line formed at the corner straight.

After the faring was done, we traced the pattern of the footprint on the bottom of the foot.  There was an inner outline and an outer outline.  We chopped off the material from the outer outline straight up to form the basic shape of the foot.  We then beveled from the edge we just created on the top of the the foot back down to the bottom of the foot to get the final shape.

This is the footstool with the pad and slipper foot done and the other two legs roughed out.  At this point I glued the rails into the two finished feet, but not the other two.

With the rails glued in, I was able to fit and then roughly shape the transition pieces on the bandsaw.  Then I glued then in place.

With all the transition pieces in I could glue the support blocks on the inside and start removing the extra waste pieces from the outside of the post.

The shaping on the trifid foot was similar to the other two.  We used the same basic method to round the leg, but took away more material at the knee in order to leave it broader, because we are going to carve a shell on it.  Like the slipper, we traced the inner and outer footprint on the bottom of the the foot.  We removed the material straight up from the outer outline to form the general shape of the foot. 

We then beveled back down from the top edge we just created to the inner outline to give the foot depth.  This was a little trickier because the bevel did not stay at a consistant angle the whole time.  The rest of the the shaping of the foot happens after we carve a "sock" up the ankle.