Cocktail tabouret

Made of 6 pieces of wood, dowels not included. Angles are 45° and 60°. Quite simple construction but the 60° angles had to be cut very precisely. I started by cutting all the pieces to length, and then I cut little grooves into the top pieces.

Initially, I was going to use dowels and glue, but these angles made me change my mind – I had to use additional fasteners – screws.

So I had to drill some countersunk holes for the legs and using screws and glue I fixed the legs to the top.

I used longer screws and drilled deeper holes for the top.

Using my mini hacksaw I cut the dowels in half and plugged all the holes I drilled earlier.

I also filled all the gaps with some wood filler.

Using my flush-cut saw I cut off the dowels and then proceeded to sand which took a while. I only used 120 and 240 grits.

Finishing with wipe-on poly, 1 or 2 coats a day for a couple of days, was the next step. I used the dowel centre point pins to keep the stool off the workbench which actually wasn’t a great idea ’cause it left some marks and dents in the wood. Anyway, there was no sanding in between and the final step was to buff everything with steel wool (#0000) and wax.

It’s very nice to the touch and perfectly smooth. It can serve as a mini table, or a stool and will help to reach a bottle of wine from the top shelf. I’m very happy with how the wood filler helped to hide imperfections and how useful is the combination of steel wool and wax. The tabouret can accommodate a couple of drinks and also can be an emergency seat for the party, thus the name – a cocktail tabouret.