Making my first footstool

Over this weekend I thought I would have a go at designing a simple piece of furniture to cut on my home-made CNC Router.

I needed something small, easy to cut and something that would actually be useful around the house. I came up with the idea of a footstool/pouffe styled with 1950s influences. The footstool would have a top and two interlocking legs.

I started by drawing my footstool on Solid Edge 2D drafting, exporting to DXF and loading these into CamBam to generate the toolpaths.

This tool-paths were then imported into EMC2 on my workshop PC, and the tool-paths are actually performed as cuts by my CNC router.

Here is a short noisy video of the top being cut.

The interlocking legs where then cut.

So with all the parts cut, they just needed a quick tidy with some sandpaper and the squaring of the joints with a square file.

This picture shows the legs, the one on the bottom has been 'squared up' the other still needs to be filed square so the joints fit together..

So with the parts tidied, I push fit it all together on my workbench. When I tried to pull it apart again, I was surprised just how snuggly it all fitted together. It should be very strong compared to a similar hand cut project.

Here is a couple of shots of the stool. I just need to think on how I will finish it. Will I paint it, upholster it, woodstain it? Hmmm...

When I make my mind up, I will do a part two.

Thanks for reading.