Foot Stool

Well, it's about time for a post!

This was a great spring project, as it was all about giving new life to an old foot stool. Well, more like an old foot platform - the original had no legs, it just sat on its cleats. I made it years ago for my Mother, who needed a 3" tall foot rest as part of some physical therapy.

I had saved it, and the time had come for it to grow into something new. I decided to add legs in the style of a Moravian chair, with the legs mortised into cleats which are let into the bottom of the two part top. The original cleats were too narrow for this purpose, and just screwed to the bottom. I removed the two end cleats, and created some 3 1/2" wide by 1/2" deep dadoes with saw, chisel and router plane. I then added larger cleats and also created a dado for the sole remaining original cleat.

Angled, tapered mortises were made with a brace, bit and tapered reamer. The legs were worked up from 2x2" stock with drawknife and spokeshave, and tapered to match the mortises.

Here it is with assembly complete and leveled with shims for trimming the legs to final length:


And a closeup of my high tech self-leveling device:


The finished foot stool:


And the boy approves!


This whole project didn't take more than a couple of hours total, but since I could only sneak in a very few minutes here and there, it took forever...