A Jamaican Stool

A few years ago, my friend Jay cut down some cherry trees on his land up in Jamaica, Vermont to use to make floors in his cabin. He had plenty of extra wood, so he generously gave me a couple of planks that then sat in my basement for long time waiting to be made into something. When Jen and I took a baby class a few months ago, the classroom had simple little stools for the women to rest their feet on that really helped in the comfort department. The shop next to where we took the class sold the stools, but I figured that it would take no time at all to make one myself. For once, I was right. This project took only a few hours start to finish. There's no fancy joints, and its not much to look at, but I really like this because the wood came from a place I love and its super useful. Behold, the stool:

The Burgie

The Burgie was an improbable collaboration. And it's one of my favorite projects. The Kid was due to arrive in a matter of weeks, and my mother-in-law, Peggy, was on a mission to get the ultimate bassinet. She spent a weekend searching her stomping grounds in northern New Jersey for something suitable, but instead of buying a bassinet, she got an idea: make one. Specifically, have me make some sort of frame and then she would sew a fabric sling to hang from the frame. We looked online at a couple of designs we liked. I provided some rough measurements that I thought made sense. Then I called Peggy up and changed those measurements when I messed up --always measure twice! Cut once! Fortunately, Peggy hadn't started her half of the project, so she could accommodate my errors.

After the Kid was born, Peggy came up to Boston and we got to see how our long-distance collaboration worked. We all were somewhat stunned to discover that the two halves fit perfectly.

The frame is made of quarter-sawn white oak finished with Tried & True Danish Oil. This was the first project I built out of white oak, and I really liked it. Peggy made the sling out of upholstery fabric, so it's heavy duty. The pockets on the side were a last minute addition. The sides of the sling hang over the frame and are attached with Velcro so it can be easily removed, and the frame folds up like a luggage rack. The hardest part was designing and crafting the latch where the cross-supports click into the legs. It had to be strong, stay closed when it's supposed to,* and open easily to fold the bassinet up. There are two latches and they're each different because the design improved on the second try. Here's one.

While this may be one of my favorite projects, the truth is, the Kid doesn't seem to be a fan. Here he is enjoying one of about five minutes he's spent in it. Fortunately, the bassinet was only a two-weekender.

*An engineer friend of mine once told me that the wings on planes are designed to withstand two and a half times the actual forces that will act on the wing--a fair margin of safety. For baby furniture, I can't help but shoot for a 10X margin.

Really? One Weekend?

"So, how long do you think it will take you?"

"Oh, it's probably just a weekend project. Maybe two weekends."

But it's never just a weekend. There's always the extra trip to the lumberyard, or a Sunday of back-and-forths to the hardware store, and making a cut too short and so on, and you might get to wondering if I ever get anything done. So this is my record of what does get done. Though don't let the title of this blog fool you.

My plan is to document projects as they happen, but I've got a backlog of things to post about. The next few posts have been years in the making. Especially in the past year, I've spent a lot of weekends in the basement, breathing a lot of dust. I hope to keep the pipeline of projects full, but if posts slow down, a lot, you'll know I've caught up to the current weekend.