This is a stool my Mom (85) got as a new young bride from her grandmother's belongings. Her grandmother got the stool as a young bride and it went to mom, along with most of the contents of her apartment when great grandma Austin passed.
It is called a conductors stool and would have ridden in the stairwell of a passenger train, to be placed by the train conductor so those folks stepping up or down out of the train didn't have such a long step up or down from the train.
It lived in our kitchen growing up and we all used it to mix jello and cookies, do dishes and purloin the chocolate chips in the higher cupboard when no one was looking. Many years ago my sister sent me the parts of the stool and the hope that I could restore it for Mom. I've looked at it for years and have been afraid to do anything with it other than make some patterns from the pieces. This year getting ready for Christmas I was making several modern versions of the stool for friends and family. I looked at the old stool and decide that nothing I would do to it would hurt it and I might be able to restore it to at least light use condition.
There were numerous old nail holes, a chunk missing out of the top and one of the legs. I cut a one inch slot in the top where the chunk was missing and fitted a piece of Alaska birch in the slot. I filled the nail holes and small cracks in the top with epoxy. One leg had a substantial piece missing so I used a piece of birch to make a new half of that leg. It all came together pretty well.
The sheet on the table saw with the sandpaper is my leg leveling jig. If a stool doesn't sit perfectly flat I work it back and forth on the sandpaper until it doesn't rock anymore.
I'm expecting a flood of tears when Mom opens this Christmas present. She had asked a number of times over the years if there was any hope for the old stool. In previous years I had told her I didn't think there was any hope for it. Like I said, I finally came to the realization that I wasn't going to make the stool any worse by trying. In the first pictures it is just held together with a few screws in the old nail holes so I could get some pictures.
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