So you know when it’s October, you get a bit carried away thinking about your wife’s birthday in a few months, you’ve just moved to America, and a legend at work casually mentions there’s some mahogany you can use for personal projects?

BOOM. Eyes light up.

An idea is born.

My wife’s into pottery and was badly in need of a new stool. So the brief was clear: a gift, heirloom build, adjustable height, small footprint, and a wide, comfortable seat. No pressure.

Off I went. Laminating boards, milling down rough shapes, then getting into the fun stuff, curves, details, and far too much time with the router. A few jigs had to be made along the way to keep things repeatable and vaguely accurate.

The central piece is a hexagonal block, which houses a stupid-thick threaded rod. Like… wildly over-engineered. I inset a massive nut into the centre with epoxy to support it, because apparently subtlety is not my thing.

Then came the glue-up. I used epoxy. Structurally excellent. Emotionally chaotic. The mahogany absolutely drank the stuff, I was not as careful as I should’ve been, and everything got very sticky very fast. After a shit-ton of sanding, the legs came out great.

The seat I made super wide, about 14 inches round, because pottery sessions are long and comfort matters. I added a small lip to the underside of the seat to hide the steel flange I had welded onto the threaded rod. Bit more epoxy here, another aggressive sanding session there, and suddenly we were ready for finish.

It came out pretty sweet. The action of the swivelling seat going up and down is especially nice, smooth, solid, and very satisfying. I even knocked out a few pottery tools from the offcuts: calipers, mallets, combs, shaping tools. Nothing wasted.

Overall, it took ages. But it came out exactly how I hoped. Happy wife, happy me, and a bloody fun project!