Takashi Nishiura, Harbord, NSW

The Stool
Tasmanian blackwood
470 w x 550 d x 870mm h

The material I chose is Tassie blackwood. I bought a pack of blackwood for previous commission work. When I went through the boards I found couple of beautiful dark figured board, so I decided to keep them aside for future special projects. Luckily I had just the right amount of timber to make one stool. I had this three legs stool design in my mind for quite a long time. The idea was slowly build up and became a shape. After drawing some sketches on the paper I made a rough mock up out of a 3mm thick MDF board. Once I’d decided the proportion, balance and the size, I made a second mock up using solid timber. Then I tried a number of different methods of joinery to be appropriate for the design. Creating something from my mind using my own hands is purely enjoyable. Especially making (designing) something for myself. There are no restrictions. No time limit, no budget limit etc. I can spend a time as long as I want to.
I just need to find the time between the jobs, after work or on the weekends. I kept on working until I found the right shape I was looking for. I have made a lot of sketches and one MDF full scale model (nails, screws and glue construction) and two solid timber mock-ups and number of the joinery samples.

Glue and finishes
I use two- part epoxy glue for most of my solid timber works. The finish I used on this stool is Feast Watsons Weathershield thinned with teak oil and a bit of turps.
Usually I use a rub-on and wipe-off method with this product. But this time I brushed the last coat on to get full gloss finish for photography. I found a Japanese small shihousori-kanna (two-way convex bottom plane) was very useful to sculpt out the seat. And it’s totally controllable.

Photo: Takashi Nishiura