New house, new toilet, new “squattie pottie.” Had to match this one to the new toilet, and I was curious to see how much better I could do on this second attempt at one of these. Brien the sawmill man and I cut up our friend Gary’s English Walnut stump after his wife demanded he cut the tree down. Fortunately they hired some noble fellers, these boys left us a solid seven feet of trunk to work with, and Gary had no use for the wood so he happily gave it to us.
I received five, four-inch thick, 3 foot by five foot slabs that I let air dry for two years before finally making part of one of them into this stool. There were many spots in the wood that checked, twisted and cracked, but I meticulously filled the voids with epoxy while shaping and before final sanding. This one has some significant gaps in the joinery as it was only my third piece of furniture, and was made before I caved in and finally purchased a pocket-hole jig. I must say, however, this project lit a fire in me for walnut. I could not believe the life that was brought out in the grain upon clear-coating this puppy. The figuring, the knots, the color variation; if there are any atheists out there that need convincing of a higher power, stare into a nice piece of gloss-finished, figured walnut for a few minutes and ask yourself: “what master of the paintbrush on this planet could come close to creating beauty such as this?”