Design

For those who follow the progress of Mr H woodwork, I am sure I have spoken about developing a range of barrel stave furniture.

Staves are a fantastic source of lovely raw material, often quarter sawn oak and as a result display some lovely grain pattern. The other thing I like about staves is their shape, curved both along the length and across the width, and narrower on the inside face. The colour contrast between inner and outer faces, produced when I remove the charred inner surface is another characteristic I try to retain.

My last blog was the first bit of barrel stave furniture I produced. The small table could quite easily have the solid top replaced with an upholstered pad to make a small bench/seat.

This second piece, again an experiment is to produce a bar/counter stool, again this has a solid wooden top which could be replaced with an upholstered/padded seat.

Three pieces of oak were biscuit jointed to form the seat and this was slightly hollowed on the top to make it more comfortable by cutting concentric levels with the router then sanding to produce the final shape. I cut off the corners to form an octagon then jointed a stave in to each corner. 

The legs were attached using counter bored screws and the plugs stained to blend with the dark colour of the staves.

A cross piece was formed using two stave offcuts and a curved edge detail added. The cross assembly was attached about 200 mm from the bottom of the staves to give a foot rest.