Build a Milking Stool

Thanks again to the Arts Presentation Grant awarded to Motherhouse from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism to support it's Old Style Life Skills Series of Workshops, Joe Brien, Lost Art Workshops, was back at Local Farm on Sunday leading a Build a Milking Stool Workshop. In this workshop, participants rotated through a series of work stations called shaving horses as they learned how to hand craft a stool to take home.

Each building team was provided with a seat blank made of eastern white pine. Here are pictures of participants planing the seats:

Each building team was also provided with an assortment of kiln-dried hardwood branches to use for the legs. In this step, this father and son team are shaving a leg tenon:


Here a participant is drilling seat holes for the leg tenons:


Chiseling split into leg tenon:


Tapping wedge into split tenon:

Sawing wedged leg tenons flush with seat top:

Two pictures of cutting legs to length:



Marking legs to length to be cut:

And the final planing of the seat top:



Voila, the group with finished stools: