The Forester Folding Camp Stool
Nearly all our wooden products start their life as offcuts from the forestry work we undertake around the woodland we manage and call our home. Unless we’re making cups, which are carved green, before we can even begin to make anything, the wood has to be cut into planks or useable shaped pieces and then dried for around a year depending on the species. Once seasoned we can then further process the timber; cutting into smaller pieces, planing and squaring before finally making something functional. Working in this way sure is time consuming, but gives us a very direct connection to the material and where it comes from. We have a hand, usually two, in every process and know intimately each tree and the woodland from which we harvest. This method also gives us a unique insight into our environmental impact, allowing us to work with nature in a sensitive way, making sure we only take what we need and strive to improve the future health of the woodland ecosystem.
Folding stool, folded.
Our Forester Folding Camp Stools are no exception; each one is hand made from durable, resilient European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) felled by us as part of our ongoing woodland management plan. After felling, we had several sections of the tree milled into 4ft long planks at our local sawmill which we then stored and dried. Some of this was used to make handles for our Micro Hiking Hatchets and the rest was reserved for folding stools. Fresh from the sawmill the timber is pretty rough, and needs much planing and sawing before it can be used. We use a mixture of traditional and more modern tools; a bandsaw and planer thicknesser for initial processing and squaring, followed by planing, shaping, carving oak pegs, finishing and assembling by hand.
Making these stools has been a very rewarding project, perhaps made even more so because it is a collaborative creation between the two of us; the heavy duty Cordura fabric seat by Emma and woodwork by me. Everything we do here at Miscellaneous Adventures is a joint effort, but it's particularly special to see a physical manifestation of our combined skills and ideas.
Our purpose has always been to create beautiful, well made items that compliment the natural environment in which they were designed to be used, that we hope will form part of future tales of adventure and which will become treasured things for years to come. We think our camp stool is one such item and we hope you agree…
Forester Folding Camp Stools are made in small batches by us in our woodland studio and are available now via the store.