instructables
Wooden Flatpack Stool
by Trochilidesign
During my study in Sydney we were asked to design
and make a wooden stool inspired by the Ulmer
Hocker, designed by Max Bill in 1954. Since I was on
an exchange in Sydney for just 6 months I
immediately thought of something I could bring back
to my homecountry in my suitcase. Freighting a solid
timber stool would be to expensive, you have to save
up as a student!
The Ulmer Hocker was a multi-functional stool with a
Step 1: Selecting Timber
Australia has many beautiful timber species I've
never seen or worked with in Europe. I wanted to use
an aussie timber for this project. It's both
environmentally friendly to work with timbers from the
same country your working in plus your not
supporting any illegal timber harvesting.
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simple and robust construction. It's dowel support
made it portable as well. I chose to take portability to
a next level.
In this Intructable I will explain the different steps
without giving technical drawings. Woodworking
gives you a lot of freedom and I'd like to give you the
opportunity to create your own versions.
I bought my timber at Anagote (Marrickville, Sydney).
This timber yard sells many timbers from all over the
world. I chose to work with Tasmanian Blackwood,
known as a furniture timber. The rough sawn
2000x150x20 mm plank was dressed at the Anagote,
so I was able to start with a perfectly square piece.
Step 2: Design and Dimensioning

The stool consist out of 4 main parts: The seat, 2 legs
and a brace. 2 beach insert were added when the
stool was finished to give it a cleaner look. The knobs
were signed to be used in its flatpack configuration,
but were not made and installed because they
seemed to be fragile and obstructed the clean looks.
The design is based on the Japanese 'Aibiki' ( ). A
very low stool/seat used for kneeling. The stool, first
made in the period, is originally made at relatively
small sizes. I upscaled it and used the traditional
design to praise the japanese craftsmanship,
especially from that period; Edo Sashimono. My
name for the stool became: Ulmer Aibiki.
The legs slide into the bottom of the seat with 2
sliding dovetails and the support is slotted into both
legs to give it some structural integrity. how
everything fits together will be made clear in the
following steps and pictures

Step 3: Creating Boards

The dressed timber was cut to size and made into whole board will cup if you clamp it on one side and
wider boards. The seat and 2 legs were made by that won't
biscuit joining 2 planks with a couple of biscuits and
PVA glue. After the first day of working with the Tassie
blackwood, I noticed the tannin in the wood was
They were cut to size with a compound mitre saw and reacting with my skin. My fingertips turned completely
table saw. black!

make sure you clamp on both sides of the board, the

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Step 4: The Legs

The two smaller boards were cut to size on the table saw. The dovetails on the short end of the boards were made
with a Festool router and a jig (shown in the picture). All corners are rounded (without showing the rounding when
the stool is fitted together as a stool) to make the flatpack "one" even package.

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Step 5: The Seat

The underside of the seat has a few tricky parts to be cut. The first thing I did was routing the pocket to store the
brace in flatpack mode. To cut the 2 sliding dovetail at an angle, I had to fabricate a wooden jig to guide the
Festool router.

Making a mistake is almost unavoidable....I ran straight through the board when cutting the pocket. I repaired is
with some leftover timber in the finishing proces.

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Step 6: The Brace

A piece of timber was dressed down to 10 mm and fitted with slots to fit the legs. The outer tabs on the brace were
very fragile. They were strengthened with some bamboo sticks and give the brace a subtle detail (even though you
won't notice them when the stool is place on the floor)

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Step 7: Finishing

The hole in the pocket was repaired with some
leftover wood. the whole is slotted to make it
consistent and cleaner. Small bits of blackwood were
glued in the taking the grain and color into
consideration.
different grades of sandpaper, P100-P600. Followed
by wet sanding the surfaces with wet- and dry
sandpaper with Tung oil, P800-P1500. The slurry fills
all the tiny cracks and results in a mirror finish. A
terrific finish for a fine piece of furniture!

The whole stool is dry sanded by hand going through

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Step 8: Flatpacking

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 Great flat pack assembly!

This packs so neat!

Very nice you get my vote!

Thank you :)

That is awesome, beautiful. Just curious, is Tasmanian Blackwood a softwood or a hardwood?

Tasmanian blackwood is a hardwood. Also specified as a furniture grade hardwood, lovely to work
with!

This is superb. I love that something that looks so simple has so many clever details tucked away.
It's a very pleasing Instructable - the finished article even more so.

Thank you so much! I hope I've inspired you :)

This Wood is absolutely beautiful. There's just nothing quite as eye catching as a pretty piece of
wood...

Indeed, it immediately reminded me of american walnut (readily available in my homecountry,

unlike Tasmanian Blackwood), but for me it's even better; it has so much depth! I love Australian
timbers!

I really like this stool. I want to make a few of these, so I am going to have to figure a way to keep
the pieces together during transportation.

The 'Aibiki' from Edo Sashimono has fixing features on the legs to keep the pieces together. I didn't
want to incorporate these because of aesthetic reasons. But you can definitely dive into it and
create something!

The only access I have to a cnc router is at a custom cabinet company. They need g-code.
Anybody know of a cheap or free converter from a dwg file, or vector pdf?

Beautiful work!

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 I love this design and I'm wondering if I can build something similar for my guitar seat. Great
design!

what angle are the leg slots cut at?

Approximately 15 degrees

It is beautiful. I love your attention to detail. Super cool that it breaks down. Super simple design.
And your photos are fantastic!

nice ! good work ;)

love it

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