Come learn to make a three legged milking, or low, stool using staked joinery! This little stool is super convenient to have around the house or workshop as a low seating option, or makes a lovely plant stand.

In this class we will be making all our parts on the lathe; spindle turning our legs then faceplate turning the seats. It's a good way to get an introduction to turning and the tapered round joinery of staked furniture.

The stool in the photo was made by George Sawyer, and we'll have the chance to reproduce that design or play with spindle turnings and seat shapes of our own!

This class is suitable for beginners or experts, if you have lots of experience with Windsor joinery you might not need much instruction, but we’ll have a good time anyway!

Tools used During the Class

Lathe with parting tool, spindle gouge, skew, faceplate, and bowl gouge
A tapered reamer and matching tapered tenon cutter
Drill press for machine reaming, hand drills, bevel gauges and squares for reaming by eye
Assembly Bench Drying “kiln” for the tenons on legs

Class Schedule

This class consists of two days of approximately 7 hours each, starting at 9:30 AM and ending each day at approximately 5 PM with a 1/2 hr (or so) break for lunch.

Day 1: Will be spent on spindle turning, with an in depth introduction to the lathe and three basic tools; the parting tool, gouge, and skew. As folks finish turning their legs they will move on to seats, which will be made on the faceplate of the lathe, using a bowl gouge.

Day 2: Will start up with any work left to do on the seats, then we will move onto drilling and reaming conical mortises in the seats. We’ll cut tenons on our legs to match, and glue and wedge them into the seats! Trimming is the final step, and we can do an introduction to milk paint if there’s time and interest.

About Eli

Eli Barlow is a woodworker, jeweler and teacher living in Plainfield Vermont. He has experience building chairs and teaching at Sawyer Made, learning windsor construction and design from George Sawyer. He was first introduced to green woodworking at Sterling College, where he has since taught an introduction to the shop class. Yestermorrow is another institution where he has attended as a student and returned to as a teacher, for ladder back chair classes in their Woodworking Certificate program. He has a small jewelry studio in the Crumb Factory, an artist collective started with friends in Montpelier VT. Eli is constantly grateful for the teachers in his life, and inspired by the craft community he gets to be a part of!

Woodturning: Turn a Low Stool