DIRESTA Wood Stool

You can watch how I did the entire project in this video

I used a hand held saw because of the size of the sheet

Then I used the table saw to cut it down to fit on the X-Carve

I like to use hot glue instead of clamps. It goes on easy and can be scraped off later. I hot glued a piece of MDF onto of the Inventables waste board.

Hot Glue the Baltic Birch to the MDF

Fire up your X-Carve, make sure you have the USB connected and click carve. I used a 1/8" bit with a federate of 70IPM, the Dewalt set on #1, and a depth per pass of .040". I probably could have pushed it a little faster but this was my first project and I didn’t want to risk breaking the bit. The formula to determine federate is:

Feed Rate = RPM x # of flutes on the bit x chip load.

The Dewalt has numbers for speed from 1-6 that maps to 16,000 RPM to 27,000 RPM

I used tabs so the pieces wouldn’t go flying when they were cut out. I then broke each tab to remove the pieces.

Using a file I scrapped off the burrs left from the bit.

Mix up the two part glue on the tape with a stick. Mixing on top of tape makes it easy to clean up. I use a wood stick to get a nice mixture and then I use the same stick to apply the glue to the stool.

Using the stick I apply the glue to each of the mating surfaces of the stool and push them together. You want to make sure you get a nice connection and clean up the glue that squishes out.

I mixed in a little wood filler into the glue and added a little more glue. I then applied it to the top of the stool to fill in the cracks. Make sure you get in all the little nooks and crannies and let it dry. We’ll come back to this in a later step.

Clamp and glue together the rungs of the stool. I made them in separate pieces so I could fit the entire stool on one sheet of plywood. This meant they come out looking like bananas and I glued them together and clamped them in to make the rungs.

I took my sander and went back over the filler now that it is dry. This gave the seat a nice smooth finish.

The A on my logo has a part that was thinner than the 1/8" bit. I had two choices. I could do a bit change and use a smaller bit for that part of the carve or I could ignore it and then Easel and X-Carve don’t attempt to carve that section. I chose to ignore it and fix it manually. Now I’m drawing with a pencil the rest of the A and knock out the wood to make the A with a hand held rotary tool.

Spray paint in the groove to make the DIRESTA logo black. Don’t worry too much about keeping it inside the lines you can spray paint a box around it and sand the excess away.

Post your version as a remake and tweet it at me.