Old-Growth Honduras Mahogany Stool

Viewer Project - By Tom Buhl from Santa Barbara, CA
Added on January 19, 2011

A Christmas gift for my daughter, had to be small and very portable to fit young person’s lifestyle. Saw a small stool in a Pop Woodworking article with pleasing shape. Added some drawers, curved surfaces and edges, and tapered and mitered legs to continue flow of Front and Back surfaces.
Created from old-growth Honduras Mahogany salvaged from the Belize River by Greener Lumber LLC. Mostly mortise and tenon construction. Floating, shop-made tenons in a few places. Detailed slide show of finished piece and the process here.

I hope it will have a life appropriate for material born so long ago.

Discussion

Justin January 19, 2011 9:42 am

That is gorgeous Tom! Great Work

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Larry Clinton January 19, 2011 10:48 am

Beautiful, Tom. Did she love it? I can just imagine the look on her face when she first saw it. Great job, and I really liked the slide show.

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runningwood January 19, 2011 12:46 pm

Tom, you continue to be source of inspiration to me. Nicely done. Keep up the beautiful work.

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MikeM January 19, 2011 2:52 pm

Excellent work! I bet your Daughter absolutely loves it!

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Ray January 19, 2011 4:19 pm

Awesome job working with the grain of the wood. Everything seems to be in the perfect place.

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Wilton M January 19, 2011 4:51 pm

Very very nice work. I especially enjoyed your fore thought in taking pictures of the before and after for the wood and your rough lay out. Great job.

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Dan Drabek January 19, 2011 6:45 pm

That’s about the sturdiest and most precisely built stool I have seen. Excellent workmanship. Beautiful wood too. (though I think your camera’s color saturation level may be set a bit high) The grain of the old-growth Honduras reminds me of a hard-to-find piece of Cuban mahogany I’ve been saving for a special project.

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Vic Hubbard January 19, 2011 6:54 pm

Tom, I ALWAYS look forward to your pieces. While this is a very “simple” piece, it’s so well done! That mahogany is so beautiful, I almost want to eat that thing!! It just looks delicious!!!!

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Matthew Hills January 19, 2011 9:02 pm

Very nice wood. I really like how you attached the drawer pull — inset into the drawer top, rather than attached to the front of the drawer face.

Wanted to ask why you rounded the corners on the top with a chisel, rather than using bandsaw and some sort of power sander?

And how heavy is the finished piece?

Matt

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Matthew Hills January 19, 2011 10:07 pm

Also, wanted to ask what caught your eye in the original design, as it sounds like you changed quite a bit.

And on your floating tenons, am wondering why you chose to square the mortises rather than round the tenons? Do you get better alignment, or just habit?

Matt#2

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Dan Pawlak January 20, 2011 6:14 am

Absolutely beautiful. Simplicity and functionality always make a good match.

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Tom Buhl January 20, 2011 7:35 am

Hey Matt, re: top corners. I am not fond of power sanders and it is pretty tight radius, so even with band saw there’d be considerable cleanup. But mostly it just felt appropriate to get my hands more involved. Don?t know the weight, but it is a hefty little guy. Despite the drawer volumes, it has a solid block of wood feel to it. The original (PW) design was really just a small stool with deep aprons, but that began the process.

re: floating tenons. Squaring mortises on the Mahogany was easy work (ahem, play). Mostly habit, but I do each method, depending on mood, usually not grand thought. Those floating tenons were mostly for alignment as the large surface area didn’t need them for strength. The leg taper made reveal at top pretty tight, so I wanted the tenons to aid positioning at glue up.

Fellow woodworkers: thanks for the comments. Nice to receive feedback from Marc?s friends. Thanks to those who checked out the slide show. It is a bit long, but lots of good stuff. For my daughter and a few contributors I also made a photo calendar using iPhoto?s calendar template. Came out stunning. ?Delicious,? as Vic has said.

Vic, your comments on my cherry prototype (forum post) was helpful, specifically the drawer pull attachment.

Rich Petty of Greener Lumber was very helpful when it came time to select planks for the face grain material. Sent pix of specific material and rough cut to my specs to aid shipping. And Mr. Spagnuolo is such a hero for posting this and all the heartfelt projects that come out of our shops around the world. Cool piece of community building by that little guy in Phoenix.

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Jonathan January 20, 2011 8:27 am

Very nice proportions.

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Tom Buhl January 20, 2011 3:12 pm

My daughter, Crosby, was pleased. I just added a couple of Christmas eve pix to the slide show to prove she was pleased…or at least being a good daughter, knows how to respond when a camera is aimed in her direction.

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Lone_Wolf January 20, 2011 7:04 pm

Wow, wonderful work. I think you did the old wood proud.

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Tom Buhl January 21, 2011 9:18 am

For those interested in Belize, at the top of the slide show page are more woodworking and travel links. Specifically: http://web.me.com/tom_buhl/Site/Belize_2006.html
Belize is a great place to spend some time and burn through a few rolls of film. ; )

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Old-Growth Honduras Mahogany Stool

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