A recently completed, long-running project accomplished with friend and fellow woodworker Erik Jacobson. These stools and benches accompany a number of new tables built in a similar style by Erik for a well-known Adirondack boarding school and summer camp. This series of stools and benches appears to be at least the third iteration of the design in the camp’s dining hall, all created at different times by different craftsmen.

The bench tops are locally harvested white pine. The legs and dovetail cleats are primarily of red oak, and some of ash.

A deceptively complicated design, for all of its visual simplicity and elegance, this variation of a traditional Moravian staked stool is made significantly more complicated by the use of square through-tenons for the leg/top connection. Traditionally this joint would have been accomplished using a tapered, round tenon and corresponding mortise — easily executed with a drill.

Bench and Stool

Each tenon is wedged diagonally.

Wedge.

Sliding dovetails pierced by tapered square tenons.

Piled-up in-process.

A flock of benches and stools congregates near the shore of a stunning Adirondack lake at sunset