Contemporary Kitchen Stools

I made these stools from black walnut (for the seat) and cherry (for the legs). I got the inspiration from a video that I saw from a French woodworker named Boris Beaulant. His stools were a little smaller. I adapted his design to make them taller and suitable to sit at a kitchen counter. I also adapted the methodology so that I could make them with my tools. His tools are pretty slick (and expensive), so I've adapted the process so that the stools can be made with tools that are more typical of a workshop in America. You can watch his video here and compare that with how I've made them.

For the seats, I rough cut the walnut to be 65" long. I was using a piece that was about 8" wide so that I could end up with eight 8" squares. After milling the wood, I ended up with a piece that was 7 3/4" wide, so a 65" length was all I needed. You can adjust the size of the seat pieces to suit your desired stool size. Anything from 7" wide to 8" wide should be suitable.

For the legs, I made the stool to be 25" high, so you can rough-cut the length to 26" or 27" to give you enough length to square up each end and put a 5 degree bevel on one end later on. Remember, they'll be angled 5 degrees, so you'll need pieces longer than 25" to get a 25" height. But it's not too critical. A 24" height would have been fine too.

You'll need enough cherry to cut 8 legs that are 3" wide and 26" long. The cherry that I had was about 10" wide, so I cut 3 lengths to be 26". That gave me enough material to cut 9 legs. That left me with one extra leg in case I made an irrecoverable error. (I was lucky and didn't have to use it.)