g'day folks uncle knackers here hey check out my snazzy new foldable step stool what an absolute little ripper i love it made from scrap wood and a couple of old hinges and for the total cost of 20 bucks i'm absolutely stoked and the handy bonus is is that if you don't want to use it as a step stool you can use it just as a stool or as an awesome home decor piece now by rights this should be a pretty simple project i'm just a bit concerned about how the whole folding mechanism is going to work and whether or not it's going to support my hulking adonis type physique don't wish to brag but back in the day now this is going to be a scrap wood project as per usual and for the seat all i'm using are these old scraps of hardwood flooring that i had left over from our house renovation and for the legs just some bits and bobs from a mangy old palette that i found on the side of the road let's get cracking now starting with the seat this is what we've got this is the underside and the boards are tongue and groove so they slot in together just like that and we'll glue and clamp these down a bit later on now the diameter for the circle for the seat is 320 millimeters which is a smidge larger than 11 and three quarters of an inch the next thing we need to do is to get a straight edge on one side and to do that just grab a piece of wood bang it up against it and bob's your uncle now from this point here from that edge come in 10 millimeters roughly half an inch and then mark a line from the top down to the bottom now if you've got room come across an inch it doesn't really matter and from here we come across our 320 millimeters over to this side and marked that line now from those two fresh marks come in 30 millimeters which is a whisker under an inch and a quarter and place a mark top and bottom on both sides now i've got two pieces of pallet wood here 70 millimeters wide which is about two and three quarters of an inch now i'm going to place these on those new marks and then just simply glue and screw in place [Music] so righto that's not coming apart anytime soon let's give it 24 hours to dry we'll come back tomorrow for stage two there you go that didn't turn out too bad at all a bit of a sand and a bit of a polish and i reckon this is going to come up beautiful with the seat now glued up our next mission is to cut this into a circle and to do that just simply transfer those two outside black marks to the front of the seat just like that there and there and then draw a line from corner to corner and where the two lines intersect that's our center and mark that with an x now i'll be cutting my circle out with my router complete with my homemade circle cutting jig if you don't have this set up don't panic a jigsaw will do the trick nicely now just a quick tip before you get committed and you're at that point of no return get yourself a piece of scrap and do a test run just to make sure that you've got the right dimension [Music] and let's see what we've got look at that a perfect circle beautiful now with the seat because it's old hardwood i found it a bit splintery and let's face it you don't want to splinter in your bum so all i did was pull out the old tin of epoxy i dug out all those nooks and crannies filled those in with the epoxy and we'll come back later and sand that back alrighty let's make those legs oh yeah before i forget just very quickly if you want to see more videos just like this one make sure you hit that subscribe and notification button down below good stuff now starting with the front two legs of the step stool i'm just using pallet wood it's 20 millimeters thick which is about three quarters of an inch and it's 90 millimeters or three and a half inches wide and i'll be cutting both boards to a length of 715 millimeters which is about 28 and one-eighth of an inch from the long point to the short point on both boards now i'll be cutting the bottoms and the tops on both boards to an angle of 21 degrees now we want to set our saw to 21 degrees which is that mark right there [Music] and lock it off speaking of stools have you ever wondered why a milking stool only has three legs i think it's because the cow has the udder or something like that yeah that's me alrighty i'll be off so the door is yep got it stop looking under control now the front two legs aren't going to sit straight up and down just like that they're going to taper in toward the top which means that down the bottom we'll need to cut a six degree bevel on that angled cut so the leg sits nice and flat on the ground and the same cut to the top so the seat sits nice and flat now you don't need to do this if you don't want to but you'll get a better result if you do now for the back two legs again we're making these out of pallet wood these are about 20 millimeters thick which is roughly three quarters of an inch and the boards are 70 millimeters wide which is about two and three quarters of an inch now as far as the length goes i've cut both of these boards at 660 millimeters which is roughly 26 inches from the long point to the short point now because these legs are going to be splayed which means they are wider at the bottom than at the top i've gone ahead and i've cut a six degree angle on the bottoms and the tops of both of these legs as you can see right here and as well as that i've gone ahead and i've cut a six degree bevel on the bottoms and the tops of both legs that way hopefully everything should sit nice and flat now to keep these two legs from spreading apart we need a couple of braces one down the bottom and one flush up on the top of those legs now the one down the bottom here come up from the bottom of our leg about 100 millimeters which is roughly four inches to the underside of our brace and we're good to go now these are going to be attached to the legs with a simple halving joint so there's no fancy joinery here now from the outside the legs on the bottom from there to there we're millimeters which is about 14 inches and all the way up the top from the outside to the outside with 210 millimeters which is about eight and a quarter of an inch now to make that halving joint all i've done is with a pencil as i've marked half the thickness of that board just like that and then with your circular saw unplugged or the battery taken out of it bring it across and then adjust the depth of that blade until it just kisses that line lock it off and then we'll run a series of cuts along that board and then finish it off with a chisel [Music] [Music] beautiful now with those half lap joints all checked out you can see how when you check out half of that material and half of that material you finish up with a really smooth flat joint now we'll cut this excess off here and here later on but for now i want to give this a quick sand and then we'll come back to glue and screw together [Music] now if you're interested in following along with me with these projects you can find all the tools i use in
