Building a Custom Shop Stool at Homestead (that could easily fit at any fine kitchen counter)

This was my fourth course at Homestead Heritage Woodworking School in Elm Mott, Texas. The instruction is first class and the setting quite serene and comfortable. The food is a pleasure as well. But what makes the place worth the trip are the people and the Spirit of the place. It is quite amazing. I highly respect the leadership for a fine job putting together a first class learning experience and exampling every day that you can divest yourself of the trappings of this world and still have quite the life. Great experience!

The finished product sans a few coats of tung oil.. Maple legs and a Cherry seat with

Cocobola wedges in the leg tops. A great project with a lot of hours in it. Interesting how time flies when you are working with wood.

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Using a Travisher tool to carve out the seat. They use them on the Windsor chair seats. It was like driving a Mercedes on this hard Cherry slab, yet homemade there at Homestead. The Cherry was hard as a brick. I'd select Basswood next time:-) Interesting how time crawls when you are carving a cherry seat:-)

Using the Adze (or Adz) to chop out the excess wood from the seat slab prior to carving and fine tuning. Mighty close to the toes... A very effective tool for removing wood or toes.

My first lathe work. I took to it handily and really enjoyed it (or at least I thought I did and they were so kind they wouldn't tell me anything to the contrary). Might have to do some at Go Away Farm soon.

The original Cherry slab we cut the seats from. Nice tree at one time!

The Woodworking School at Homestead Heritage... hard to imagine having a really bad day there, unless you took a toe off with the adze....