Stools for Maker Faire
A month or so before one of the early Maker Faires…maybe the first Austin Faire in 2008?..I got an email from the MAKE folks asking if I would be interested in making a bunch of simple stools that they could scatter around outside. They needed to be able to stand up to rainy weather, knock down flat and be easy to assemble, and not be too expensive…they may end up wandering off during the event!
I thought for a bit and proposed these simple 3-piece stools. I’d just started working with Advantech and like that it held up so well to moisture. It was certainly heavy and can be a bit splintery so needs a little sanding and rounding over edges, but it still seemed like the best material for the job.
For maximum stability a stool should have 3 contact points with the ground, but I wanted to keep things simple and two slotted legs fit the bill, held securely together with 2 screws. After some fiddling and fussing I found a size that let me cut 5 stools from a $30 sheet of Advantech and was ready to start cutting.
Each sheet had v-carved text and countersinks for the assembly screw holes so a 90 degree v-bit was needed, and profile cutting was done with a 3/8" endmill.
I generally try to avoid bit changes and could have pocketed the MAKE logo instead of v-carving it I guess, but the hard corners in the logo look great when v-carved…I was worth the small hassle of a bit change!
Vacuum holddown kept everything in place while it was being cut, with the exception of the waste material in the hand hole which kept popping loose and jamming the bit. They ended up getting a single tab to hold them in place, which was removed when the seats were rounded over with a hand router and 3/16" radius roundover bit.
I can’t remember how many I ended up making, but think it was in the 40–50 stool range. They were pretty successful as stools, shown by how many of them disappeared during the Faire, but over the years I’ve made lots of other stool designs both of my own design and from other “real” designers and will post about them soon.
