The Kit
We will provide you with a full kit of stool parts, precisely designed and made in our south London workshop. In addition you will receive a set of furniture making tools unique to completing the stool, as well as the professional finishing products needed to make it sing. The only things you’ll need to supply are a drill and a hammer – if you don’t have these yourself, we bet your neighbour or best mate will let you borrow them!
The Masterclass
Sustainability
We are deeply committed to making sustainable furniture and this applies equally to our make-at-home kits. It all starts with the timber itself, which will always be sustainably sourced British hardwood, taken from continuous cover forests that are managed to the highest standards to promote biodiversity. Certified by FSC and part of the GIB (Grown in Britain) scheme, our timber has a chain of custody that means we know exactly where it comes from and that its quality and credentials can be relied upon.
We also believe that sustainability lies within the design of our products themselves. Built to last, and be passed on for generations, all of our furniture is designed around the idea that quality, strength and integrity are key to the true nature of sustainability.
What’s in the box: 1 x seat top, 3 x legs, 3 x dowels, 6 x brass pins, 7 x timber wedges, 1 pot of wood glue, 1 tube of super glue, 1 tin of finishing oil, 2 x oiling rags, 1 x glue scraper, 1 pair of nitrile gloves, 3 x sanding blocks, 3 pieces of loose sandpaper, 1 x glue brush
What you will learn
You can of course buy a complete stool directly from us but where’s the fun in that?! By giving you the tools and knowledge to build one yourself you will gain a much better understanding of what goes into the process of making an award-winning piece of furniture. Jan’s video masterclass covers everything you will need to make your Cable Shop stool successfully, and is filled with tricks and tips that come with his extensive knowledge of woodwork and furniture making. You will be left with something to be proud of as well as new skills to carry across into further DIY and woodworking projects.
Where it began
Starting out as our trusty little workshop stool, the Cable Shop Stool is so named for the angled profiles of it’s 3 legs, inspired by the chamfered piers of the 1937 cable making factory opposite our south-east London workshop. Despite its unassuming dimensions and seeming simplicity the stool has always been tough and versatile enough to stand up to the rigours of everyday workshop life.
Since then it has become one of our best selling products, feeling just as at home beside a beautifully made bed or holding a sprawling houseplant as it does at the dinner table or even on our workshop floor.
While it has evolved since its inception, the stool is at heart a functional and precise object that shows off the very best of sustainably grown British timbers, traditional expressive joinery and refined design integrity, with numerous key details that give it a playfulness and honesty that is found in every piece we design and make.
Design
Seat height – 440mm Seat diameter – 310mm
The Cable Shop Stool is designed around a classic joint in the furniture maker’s repertoire – the mortise-and-tenon. Specifically, each leg joins to the seat with a double-wedged through-tenon joint that gives excellent strength and stability, as well as a striking visual joinery detail on the stool top, accentuated by the use of contrasting timber wedges.
The legs are profiled on the inside and precisely drilled through to receive three timber dowels that connect the legs together at equally spaced intervals, bracing them into a sturdy and solid trio. Each dowel is locked in place with a brass pin that adds a pop of metallic shine, and cut flush to give a unique oval cross-section on the outside face of each leg.
The seat of the stool is a simple-seeming round that in fact contains quite complex geometry on the underside. Three facets machined at 12 degrees blend into each other to create a rolling edge around a central triangle. The mortises are then machined in the centre of each of these facets, meaning that the 90 degree shoulders of each leg’s tenon has a flat surface to sit against and the legs are therefore set at 12 degrees.
Sustainability
We are deeply committed to making sustainable furniture and this applies equally to our make-at-home kits. It all starts with the timber itself, which will always be sustainably sourced British hardwood, taken from continuous cover forests that are managed to the highest standards to promote biodiversity. Certified by FSC and part of the GIB (Grown in Britain) scheme, our timber has a chain of custody that means we know exactly where it comes from and that its quality and credentials can be relied upon.
We also believe that sustainability lies within the design of our products themselves. Built to last, and be passed on for generations, all of our furniture is designed around the idea that quality, strength and integrity are key to the true nature of sustainability.