How you can make a Windsor Stool.

Using traditional hand tools learn how to make a beautiful stool from green wood logs.

This is a 5-day course in which students are taught 18thC English woodworking skills. It involves birthing your stool from a local green tree using traditional hand tools and techniques.  On this course we use either our local red stringy-bark Eucalyptus macrorhyncha or robinia pseudoacacia. Solid seats are shaped from either camphor laurel or elm, and if your stool has a back, this is steam bent ash. 

Because the components of the stool are split or riven and not sawn, the stool is light but strong. The green wood tenons of the legs and stretchers are dried and shrunk in warm sand before inserting into a mortise that is in green wood. The moisture in the mortise swells the tenon locking the join and replicating a centuries old woodworking technique. Tools used during the course include a pole lathe, operated with your foot; a shave horse; drawknife; adze; spokeshave; maul; froe; and hand plane; to name a few.

To enquire please call 0427 677 226 or USE OUR CONTACT FORM

Accommodation: /stay-and-visit/

Price: $750

The process in pictures:

Legs and stretchers are split or riven from green wood logs using a splitting axe, froe and a maul.

They are shaped with a side axe then a drawknife on a shave horse.

And turned on a pole lathe operated with your foot.

Seats are shaped with an adze, scorp, travisher, spoke shave, plane and cabinet scrapers.

Assembly. Day 5 and all done.

Another option, stools with a back. This will require an extra day and cost $850.