12VIDEO Footstool Plans Tour

In this video I want to give you some tips that apply to the footstool project

It's a simple project but don't be fooled because there's a lot of

procedures here, a lot of things you're going to need to do that are common to a

lot of woodworking projects. So it's just four pieces of wood. I recommend you make

this out of 2x10 construction grade lumber. So if you look down here that

means that all the parts involved are nine and a half inches wide and if

you're using this as a footstool then a 20 inch length for the top will do a

good job for you. You could make the top quite a bit longer and you could turn

this into a sort of a bench. You might want to increase the height of it as

well if you're going to use it as a bench but just think loosely. There's a

lot of options here. The main purpose of this project though is to teach you

basic skills about cutting, drilling, and joining pieces of wood together. In this

case into something that's moderately useful. Since this is a beginner's project I'm going to go to drill right down into the details that you need to

understand the basics and the first thing has to do with grain direction. So

it's not immediately obvious here but there is some shading that shows you

that the grain direction on this cross piece for instance runs this way. The

grain runs along the length of that piece so in this case horizontally as

the stool is going to sit on the floor. The legs have a grain direction that

runs opposite so up and down in this orientation and over on the top the grain

direction runs this way. Now why does this matter? Well wood behaves very

differently across its grain compared with along the grain. So for instance

wood is going to be very strong along its length. So if we applied a heavy

weight say to this top piece and the top piece was only supported on the ends

just for sake of argument that 2 by 10 could take an awful lot of weight in a

downward direction like this. Not so much crossways. Wood is much weaker across its

grain so if we applied pressure say in this direction a downward force that

would be say thin but running along the length of the piece of wood that wood is

very likely to break along the grain. So in other words to split in half or some

version of half along its length and this is a very important thing to

realize. If you need strength and you're using solid wood the grain direction has

to be oriented in a certain way. I mean for instance let's just say we could

take this cross piece and instead of having the grain direction running this way it ran up and down. Well it wouldn't be very long at all before the leg and

the piece of cross pieces that it's attached to would break somewhere along

that grain line because as I said wood is very weak across its grain but quite

strong along its grain. Another thing I want you to think about is the need for

square cuts on a project like this in fact on any woodworking project really

and when I say square that's a term in woodworking that's used to describe 90

degrees. So for instance if we look at this leg piece on the end these edges

this edge and this edge are 90 degrees to each other in here and this edge and

this edge is 90 degrees in this orientation. Now why does this matter

Well fit and finish is one reason. If these ends these edges aren't cut square

then the project isn't going to come together properly. So for instance if the

cross piece has if this edge here is not square then the legs aren't going to be

parallel to each other. They're going to be angled in or out and you're probably going to be able to see that. It's going to look a little wonky. If the top of the

legs and the edge of the cross piece aren't square and in the same plane then

the top is not going to be able to sit properly on this. It's going to be maybe

you know up on one side or not fully supported. That might be another

issue. So just a general wonkiness is going to set in. So square cutting very

important. Modern electric power saws often cut things square automatically or more or less automatically. This project I'm recommending you build with a

handsaw as your only saw and besides being safer and quieter and cheaper and

a great weight for a beginner to start it also gives you a chance to develop

hand-eye coordination which if you want to be a good woodworker is a very

important skill to have. So don't just rely on power tools all the time and how

much easier they make things. I want you to struggle a little bit here and part

of that struggle involves making square cuts with a handsaw. It might sound daunting

to you. There are some tricks as you'll see that make it pretty easy actually

Now although this project could have been put together with nails driven with

a hammer I'm recommending screws for a couple of reasons. First of all they're a

lot stronger than nails. It's also a lot easier to drive them in a controlled way

so that they actually go where you want them to go. They don't veer off on some

weird angle. They're just a superior way to fasten project parts together

especially this project. Now the thing is although technically you could just

simply drive the screws right into wood that has no holes in it and the screws

would go through that's kind of risky and the risk is that the screws would

cause splitting of the wood especially here near the edge where these screws

are going in fairly close to the end of the top. So the solution is something

called pre-drilling. That's what I mentioned here in the plans. A 3 32nd of

an inch drill bit boring a hole for a number 10 by 3 inch wood screw works

great. The hole is fairly small so the screw still has a lot to grab and bite

into and it can be strong but the screws not going to veer off on some wonky

angle as long as you've drilled the pilot hole square. It's also not going to

cause any splitting. Besides the split hazard up here is definitely a split

hazard down here when you're screwing into the end of these pieces. So your

pilot hole should actually go right between the two. It should continue start

here and continue here and then you drive the screws and hold it all

together as a final step. But pre-drilling very important. Now if you

look at these screws they're a deck style screw. It's perfect for this

project and they have what's called a flat head. So the head is flat on top and

the shoulders are angled and that's so that the screw can sit flush with the

wood. It won't stick up above the wood. Now if we were making this out of hardwood

we would have to actually create an angled pocket here. Wherever the screw

head is going to go we have to create a countersunk pocket. That's the term

countersinking in order to accommodate that head. But because we're dealing with

softwood on this project it's squishable enough that when you drive the screw home all the way in that the angled edges of the head will

compress the wood and the screw head will become flush with the board all on

its own. So there's no need for countersinking in this sort of a project

In fact it works better. Besides being faster and not requiring a countersink

bit to use in your drill you just get a neater job because you're not going to

be tearing any wood or maybe countersinking too deep or whatever. It's

just going to drive in as far as you tighten those screws and that'll be that

Now you have to understand that this video tour of the plans in no way takes

the place of the written instructions and the other demonstration videos that

apply to this project. But I just wanted to give you an introduction so you

understand what's going on. Theoretically you can build this project from nothing more than the plans you see here because we've got all the

dimensions we need. This one and a half inch thick dimension for instance, that's

the thickness of the construction grade softwood that I'm recommending you use

for this project. Twelve and a half inches high, that's a short foot stool

type height. You can increase it in height, you can decrease it in height

Probably about as, you can make it as short as the width of the cross piece

here if you wanted. It is completely acceptable for the bottom edge of the

cross piece to be flush with the bottom ends of the legs if you want, but that

would be a fairly short little stool. We have a half inch here, notice the half

inch overhang of the top in relation to the legs. That's variable, you can

adjust that. I wouldn't make it any less than half an inch, but you might want to

go for three quarters, change the look of it a little bit. You can exercise some

creativity there. I hope you like the project, it's as I said it captures

a lot of what needs to be known when it comes to woodworking and you'll have a

great little something left over that you can use afterwards. Just before I

finish up here, I want to show you another version of the plans for the

same project. This was drawn in a program called SketchUp. Some of you may have

heard of this before. It's a terrifically powerful program and look what it lets you do. You can create things in 3D. See I'm clicking and I'm

dragging around in order to explore the whole footstool. We can go all around. Now

this is a pretty simple project so I'm not saying you really need to see these

3D drawings, but part of my education for you is to alert you to things

developments, and tools, and approaches along the way so that you can keep them

in mind so that you'll have have them available in the future as your skills

develop. Now as I said this is one of the downloadable files that goes with this

footstool project. Take a look up here. You'll see it's SketchUp Viewer. That's

the program I'm using. Regular SketchUp allows you to see and move around just

like you see me doing here. It also lets you draw things as well so that does

take some practice. You're not going to be able to use SketchUp right away. The

nice thing about using the SketchUp Viewer here is you can't mess this drawing up. It's just a viewer. You can't do any editing, but it is handy to be

able to move around and you know just see how everything fits together because

as I've said before and as I will mention again, visualization is hugely

important when it comes to woodworking, especially if you're involved in any

kind of designing. Even a simple thing. It's very helpful to be able to see it

in 3D from all angles and so that's what we've got here