Paper Stool 2
See the original not-so-successful Paper Stool
What I Would Do Different Next Time
Clearly, the most pressing issue is securely connecting the top surface to the middle layer. With the rig, I can put a small chopstick segment between each roll in the top surface and the middle layer. The chopstick segments will be more able to take the shear forces than just glue.
Fully assembled, the stool stands about 23 cm tall – a bit higher than I had originally wanted. Next time, I’m going to make the legs shorter.
For the third iteration, I’d like to try out something similar to Maya Obrist’s design to see if it is easier to assemble.
And just out of curiosity, I’m going to find out how much force a single roll of paper can withstand.
First off, it’s a lot more sturdy. I can rock back and forth while standing on the top and it shows no signs of breaking. Secondly, it stands at about 11 cm - just the right height for resting my feet on while keeping my knees from hitting the bottom of the desk. Heck, I even used a design similar to Maya Obrist’s design. But I still haven’t found out how strong a single roll of paper is. Come to think of it, I should really call this a paper footstool.
Moving on…
Design
The design is very simple (and simple is always good). The stool consists of nine rolls of paper strung together with chopsticks. The rolls are arranged such that you put two rolls parallel on the bottom, then lay two more rolls perpendicular on top, kind of like building a log cabin. I only needed three layers to achieve the right height. The bottom and top layers consist of two and five rolls, respectively, rolled on the short edge of the paper (so the length is 11″). The middle layer is made of two rolls rolled on the long edge of the paper (so the length is 8.5″).
To hold the rolled up paper together, I sliced up paper towel rolls and slipped three over each roll. Because the walls of the paper towel rolls were thinner than those from the last project, each long roll consisted of roughly 45 sheets and each short roll had roughly 35.
Finally, holes were drilled into the rolls and chopsticks were threaded through them, shish-kebab style. There are two whole chopsticks (roughly 22 cm each) holding the top layer together and four smaller segments (10 cm each) threaded vertically through each corner.
The nice thing about this design was that it didn’t use a single drop of glue. The entire thing is held together by friction! =)
The Top Surface
The top surface is basically constructed the same way as the version 1. Holes were drilled on two ends and chopsticks were threaded through them. This time though, I had the jig I made last time to ensure the two holes are parallel to each other so the result is a much flatter surface. The only other difference was taking into account the vertical holes I needed to drill to connect the other layers.
One thing I realized though when drilling the paper was not to go too fast. At first, I went faster and faster because I didn’t want to burn the paper too much (it smokes and there’s quite some paper dust; consider using a mask when doing this, although I didn’t). It turns out that if I went slower, it made a much cleaner hole and therefore made it easier to thread the chopsticks. The amount that the paper burnt certainly didn’t do any harm.
The Other Levels
Basically done the same way - drill two holes on the ends to allow the chopsticks to thread through.
Final Paper Count
Since some of the paper towel rolls had different diameters, I had to play around with the number of sheets for a tight fit. But roughly the count goes:
Top Surface & Bottom Level: 45 sheets/roll * 7 rolls = 315 sheets
Middle Level:35 sheets/roll* 2 rolls = 70 sheets
Total: 385 sheets
Next Time
The current version works fine right now, so I think I’ll take a break from paper stools =) Perhaps other furniture (shelves? desks? chairs?) can be constructed with these techniques? If anyone wants to give it a shot, I’d love to see the results!