Stick Stools and Benches

What staked means

Staked furniture drives legs into holes bored through (or into) a thick seat or top and locks them with wedges. No aprons, no frame - the slab itself carries the load. It’s the oldest European furniture form: milking stools, Welsh stick chairs, backstools, and sawbenches. Christopher Schwarz’s The Anarchist’s Design Book lays out staked and boarded vernacular furniture for a modern shop ¹.

It suits green woodworking exactly: a riven or hewn slab, legs shaved on the horse, and a brace and bit.

The slab

• Thick: about 1 3/4-2 in. (45-50 mm) for a stool, so the hole has enough length to grip the leg.
• Dry, or close to it, for the seat. Legs and tenons should be drier still at assembly; a dry tenon in a slightly wetter seat gets gripped tighter as the seat dries around it - the same water-as-a-clamp idea used in post-and-rung chairs ² (see the Chairs lesson on the chairmaker’s joint).
• Species: oak, ash, elm, or a dense softwood for the seat; ash, oak, hickory, or maple for legs.
• A half-log slab with the bark side down makes a traditional bench.

Rake, splay, and sightlines

Legs lean outward for stability. Seen from the front, the lean is splay; from the side, rake. Together they combine into one resultant angle, the true lean along the leg’s sightline - the line on the seat, seen from above, that the leg leans along ¹.

For a three-legged stool with legs evenly spaced, the sightlines simply run from the center through each leg, and every leg gets the same resultant angle - typically about 12-18 degrees. Benches with four legs need a little geometry: draw the sightlines on the underside, then set a bevel gauge to the resultant angle.

Boring and reaming

1. Mark leg positions and sightlines on the underside of the seat.
2. Set a bevel gauge on the sightline at the resultant angle.
3. Bore with a brace and auger, sighting the bit against the bevel gauge from the side and keeping it on the sightline from above (a mirror or a helper helps). Bore through.
4. For tapered joints, ream the hole with a tapered reamer, checking the angle as you go. Cylindrical holes are simpler; tapered holes self-tighten under load ¹.

Tenons and wedges

• Shape the tenon to match: a tapered tenon cut with a tapered tenon cutter or drawknife and spokeshave, or a cylindrical tenon sized to the actual bit.
• Saw a kerf for the wedge in the top of each tenon, oriented so the wedge will run across the seat’s grain - a wedge running along the grain acts like a splitting wedge ¹.
• Glue (hide glue is traditional) or drive the legs dry, then drive a dry hardwood wedge into each kerf, and saw and pare flush.

Leveling the legs

Stand the stool on a flat surface, shim the legs until the seat is at the height and tilt you want, then scribe all the legs at once with a pencil on a block of the right thickness, saw to the lines, and chamfer the foot of each leg so it won’t splinter when dragged.

A bench

A staked bench is the same work with a longer slab and four (or six) legs. Keep legs well in from the ends and edges, and choose a slab thick enough not to bounce; long benches benefit from a stretcher or a slightly thicker top. Langsner’s Country Woodcraft includes country benches made this way from riven and hewn stock ³.

What to take from this

Staked furniture wedges legs into holes in a thick slab. Use a 45-50 mm seat, drier tenons, and ash, oak, or hickory legs. Draw sightlines on the underside, bore and ream each hole at one resultant angle (12-18 degrees is typical), wedge each tenon across the seat’s grain, then shim, scribe, and saw the legs level.