Step Stool

I have a habit of putting things high up on shelves. This works well for me. I’m tall enough to see and reach most things in our house without a stool. But K’s height is different enough from mine that she can’t quite pull down the bins of outdoor gear stashed up high in the gear room or the extra pantry supplies put up high in the pantry. That I can fix.

A simple step stool. Should be easy. Four pieces of wood, tied together with some glue.

I cut my first dovetails back in the fall. I was inspired by a video of a craftsman spitting out crisp dovetails with nothing more than marking tools, a saw, and a chisel. He made it look no harder than making a morning coffee. With a handful of practice joints under my belt, I was riding a high of early success. Naturally, a humbling was on the way.

I cut down a piece of cherry that was left over from another project. I planed the faces down and laid out my joints. Overzealous after a couple of weeks of not cutting a dovetail and with a Japanese handsaw in hardwood that was almost an inch thick, I was humbled. The gaps between my pins and tails were too significant to be structurally sound. I would have to try again. I had enough length on the legs and top to try again without throwing the whole thing in the burn bin.  A little deflated, I re-marked the joint and used this failure as an excuse to justify buying a new handsaw.

A few weeks later, I was fully convinced that with my new brass back saw in hand, I was on the road to success. Still not quite as good as the craftsmen that have decades of experience. Turns out that the tool doesn’t make the skill, but it does help to have the right tool for the job. I recut a couple of the worst offending tails another saw kerf wider and felt good enough about the fit to move on. Third time is the charm.

A little plane work to clean things up, broken edges with sandpaper, and sealed up with a natural finish, and now K can reach the things I put up too high. Maybe I’ll remake this stool after it wears out, hopefully in a decade or two. Until then, I expect this will serve us well and be a good reminder of two things: 1) there is no substitute for repetitions, and 2) holding yourself to an unreachable standard makes things less fun.