Friday, August 1, 2014

Project: Quick and Simple Foot Stool

I don't know about you, but when I sit at my computer for extended periods of time, I'm always trying to find the most comfortable place for my feet to be.

In the past I've tried a lot of different things, milk crates, stacked books, a plank of wood, garbage can, you name it. None of those things really worked out for resting my feet on. It was about time to build my own foot stool. It's technically a 'foot rest' or 'foot riser' if you want to get real picky about it, but either way - it's a place to put my feet when I'm at my desk.

I started out with a single 24" x 24" x 3/4" piece of plywood from the 'place that sells improvement materials' - did some rudimentary measuring, and got to cutting. I did the cutting with my cordless circular saw, a miter saw, and a jigsaw, which isn't my ideal way to work but I didn't have access to a table saw, and my bandsaw motor is kaput.

(Above: Planing two cut boards to the same width)

Planing plywood is not recommended. Tearout city. I ended up finishing the planing work with a couple files/rasps. And of course, a fair amount of swearing. My workspace was a tiny patio (as you can see in the photo below) which is usually where I do my work, because it's covered from the elements, and I can use the railing as a makeshift clamping surface. 

(Above: Cut to size, and test assembly)

After cutting, measuring, test fitting, I realized I needed to trim a bit more material to clear the baseboards... so a quick visit with "Mr Jigsaw" and that problem was solved. Another thing I learned is that drilling into plywood "end grain" for lack of a better word, is also not ideal. Makes for kind of a poor join, but again, this is just a tiny stool to hold my feet 5" off the ground, so no big deal.

(Above: Test assembly, still have to modify one more thing before glue-up)

For the cross-brace, I decided to do an angle cut into it, to make it look a little nicer, and just in case I needed to clear the base of my office chair. But mostly because it looked nice. And also to correct some poor cuts from earlier. 

After test fitting, adjusting, pre-drilling, and so on, it was time to do the glue-up. This part wasn't totally necessary - but it made the whole project just a little more secure and made it feel a bit sturdier.

(Above: A little dab will do.)

The last part of the whole build (if you can call it that) was to apply a finish to the thing. Cheap plywood is prone to splintering, and generally doesn't feel good. So I spent a fair amount of time sanding the whole project down, made sure it was relatively smooth, and then applied two coats of Minwax Wipe-On Poly. 

Normally you're just supposed to use a rag for wipe-on poly (I think?) but in this case I just used some cheap little brushes which worked out well. In retrospect, I should have poured off some poly into a small cup or container, because pouring it direct out of the rectangular bottle onto the work-piece was really annoying. Lesson learned for next time I suppose.

This is what I consider a 'quickie' project because it was built on a whim, with no real planning or design beforehand, and it was purpose-built to suit a need. It's been under my desk for a few months now, and it's working very well.