Bike Saddle As Workshop Stool

It is not uncommon for parts from a particular hobby or pursuit to be repurposed by enthusiasts as furniture. Car nuts will make sofas from the rear bodywork of a saloon car, for example, or coffee tables from engine blocks as you might have seen in the Top Gear studio.

A cycling enthusiast asked [Quinn Dunki] to produce a workshop stool using a bicycle seat, and the resulting piece of furniture is both elegant and functional, if probably comfortable only to those used to a racing saddle.

The stool itself rests on a vertical tube with a tripod at the bottom, each leg of which is fitted with a caster. We are taken through the steps to make the metalwork, in particular the rather tricky 45 degree tubular joint required for each leg. We see the unexpectedly high forces above the casters cracking the initial tack welds, and the resulting more substantial joint. And finally we’re treated to the stool being elegantly modelled by Sprocket the cat, as you can see below the break.

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Revenge Of The Glueless Stool And A New Folding Chair

glueless stool

[Vincent] is at it again, with the final iteration of his glueless stool and a new project.

As many of you commented on the original post, three legs might not be enough. He might have taken note, as the final design contains not 3, not 4, but five legs. After the break we have a clip of it being used, and it looks quite sturdy!

But is that it? Is [Vincent] done with innovative wood furniture? Nope. Not since his wife came up with a challenge to create a practical, foldable, and especially, not ugly — chair. He began by researching the dry subject of chairs and determined the approximate popliteal height that his chair should provide. Keeping with the theme, he wanted this chair to be cut from a single piece of wood, just like the stool. A few sketches later and he had a basic design ready, still glueless, but unfortunately this time requiring hinges. After a few hiccups in his CNC program, he had a working foldable chair, but our guess is it’s not quite the final design.

Just like last time, all the files are freely available from his Github, so if you happen to have a CNC router, or maybe a laser cutter, you can make your own!

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Many Iterations Of A Plywood Stool That Requires No Glue

cnc-router-stool-design

At his local hackerspace [Vincent Sanders] noticed an interesting problem. The stools that they had were great in most cases, but there was one workbench which was very much the wrong height for them. So began his quest to design and fabricate plywood stools which use no glue for their joints.

The Cambridge Makespace (in the UK) turns out to be a perfect environment for this type of project. They already had a CNC router which can cut the plywood pieces, and there are other members who were willing to help train [Vincent] on the equipment. He found a design on Thingiverse which fit the bill, except for the actual measurements. He needed metric units to match the sheet stock available to him. Once converted he put together a stool that didn’t work at all. The thickness of the plywood just didn’t mesh with the tolerances of the joints. After wandering around to different suppliers in town, digital calipers in hand, he came up with a range of actual thicknesses and adjusted his joint design accordingly.

Of course this wasn’t the last revision. Even with the joints working the seat was still a little rickety. He moved to the next plywood thickness offered, redesigning the files to match. His final stool works like a charm, with five or six of them fitting on one standard sheet of plywood.

Robostool Follows You To Your Chair

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF6ZL-WerYo]

[Steve] shares another project with us, this time a robotic foot stool. A Parallax Propeller micro controller, some linear actuators, servos, and a slew of sensors are enclosed in this vinyl covered cube. It has 3 modes, remote control, follow me (seen in the video above), and come to the beacon. This, along with [Steve]’s other creations make us think that his ultimate goal is to have a house full of servant bots eager to carry out every task that would pull him from his chair. That seems like a noble goal to us. You can download source code and schematics from his site. Join us after the break to see more pictures and videos of Robostool.

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