dottob

Paper Stool

See version 2 of the paper stool here!

Concept

Walking through a computer cluster one day, I glanced in the recycling bin and noticed hundreds of sheets of paper, most of which were misprinted on one side.

Well that’s a waste, so I took them to use as scrap paper. Then I had this crazy idea of rolling up the paper and realized it was remarkably strong – one 40-sheet stack rolled up could support at least 120 lbs with no problems.So rolled paper could be used as a structural material. Now what? I had been wanting a footrest under my desk, so I knew I had to make one out of paper. A quick Google search turned up only one obscure example of a paper stool made by Maya Obrist [Link] and no instructions or project log of how it was done.After several designs, I settled on a top layer supported by two beams, all sitting on top of four legs. The top surface is made of rolls of 40 sheets, the middle layer has rolls of 45 sheets, while the legs are rolls of 50 half-sheets.

Building the Top Surface

The top surface consists of five rolls with 40 sheets of paper each. To bind them, I sliced up paper towel rolls into 2 cm wide bands (1 cm on some when I started to run out) and slipped three on each roll.
The bands are only there to prevent the paper from unraveling, so any strength of paper towel rolls will be adequate. With the diameter of the paper towel rolls at roughly 4cm, I found that 40 sheets of rolled paper fit comfortably inside, while 50 sheets is about the maximum I could fit.And those five rolls are pretty darn strong!

Now to connect the rolls together. I originally thought of slipping little cardboard triangles between the rolls and gluing them, but this method is hard to do well.
The next idea, which is the one I ultimately went with, is to drill holes in the rolls (with a drill press) and push a chopstick through them, shish-kebab-style. Problem is, I didn’t have a way to ensure that all of my holes are parallel to each other, so I ended up with a wavy top surface.

The Rig

To solve the problem of drilling non-parallel holes, I made a simple rig to hold the paper rolls in place. It’s made from a scrap piece of wood with the front section of a chopstick pushed through the hole drilled in it. Now I can drill the first hole, slide the roll onto the rig, then drill the second hole parallel to the first.

The Legs

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of some of the steps in building the legs. The legs are made of rolls of 50 half-sheets each, with a bundle of 3 chopsticks in the core. But since my top surface is slightly wavy, I made one of the legs longer to compensate.

Originally, I had planned to have the bundle of 3 chopsticks go all the way through the middle layer as a way to connect the legs. But after drilling the first hole in the middle layer (something like 0.3”), I realized it was unnecessary to have such large holes. So I trimmed off two of the three chopsticks so only one chopstick runs from the bottom of the legs into the middle layer. The bundle of 3 chopsticks in the core of the leg fits so well that I didn’t need to use glue to hold them in place.

Finally, I glued the top layer to the middle layer. I soon found out that this isn’t the best method of attachment. While the stool could support my weight (and probably a lot more) when I lowered myself carefully onto it, a friend walked into my room, stepped on it, and the top surface promptly separated itself from the middle layer. =/

Final Paper Count

Top surface:

40 sheets/roll * 5 rolls = 200 sheets

Middle layer:

45 sheets/roll * 2 rolls = 90 sheets

Legs:

50 half-sheets/roll * 0.5 half-sheets/sheet * 4 rolls = 100 sheets

Total: 390 sheets of A4 paper

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.

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