Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 26

Photograph by Sam Murphy

Fool’s Stool

Build a fake Colonial Period stool good enough to fool almost everybody.

By Gordon Thorburn

ALMOST ANYBODY CAN MAKE A 17th-century board stool. In those early, pioneering times, techniques and tools were fairly primitive and ambitions consequently modest, so today, faking the American Colonial style requires a do-it-for-fun, cavalier attitude rather than serious precision.

In making your brand-new antique, it actually helps if you begin with joinery that’s not perfectly straight, level, smooth, and right-angled.

You’re not making a direct copy. The photographs are here for guidance, but each fake piece is ...