Pair o’ Stools

Another little commission! This project is for a couple of stools to sit near a front door for shoe taking off and putting on activities.

I got my hands on a few empty Cat6 ethernet cable drums from work which would be a perfect size to base the stool on. As a rough plan of attack I thought I would prepare a bunch of my pallet stock into rounded over batons and attach them to the inside of the drum. All my current pallett stock is from different types of pallet so it would not be a uniform colour or grain pattern but I figured that “added to the character?”.

Let us begin. I measured up the drums and found that two stacked on top of each other would be a good seat height.

The first step was to start preparing the pallet slats into uniform lengths and similar widths. Trimming them down length-wise cleaned up the edges nicely. Then I wanted to round over each side to give it some more depth and make it visually more interesting. Lastly I was going to sand all the battons to 120 grit. I didn’t have a router table or bench sander so I had to Macgyver some static tools!

Next on the rosta was to fill the nail holes with some new shiney new nails, either a really dumb idea is potentially genius? I just cleaned up the holes with a drill, cut some nails to length then hammered them in. Simples.

Then it was time to use some trusty ol’ linseed oil on all the battons and start to attach them to the empty drums. I used a nail gun to drive the nail/staple through the top of the ply into the ends of the batons. I didn’t use glue as I didnt think it was necessary due to only be subjected to downward force (and just incase I needed to make adjustments during assembly).

After finishing all 4 drums I needed to attach them in pairs to make 2 seats. I simply used wood glue and stacked some old wheels on top to apply pressure whilst the glue cured.

Finally I need to make a removable cushion which meant trying my hand at upholstering some foam. Before upholstering I added some chunky dowels to an end plate of another cable drum and then drilled a hole in top of the stool in the same place which meant they slotted in nicely, but could be removed if needed.

I had some old fairly thick curtains that looked to fit the bill for foam covering purposes. However I wasn’t a huge fan of all the folds that were visible from the side so I opted for some elastic bar stool covers, which gave a slicker look. The last two pics have the other seat covers on