Plywood Step Stool Workshop Projects
It’s handy to have a step stool in the shop (or around the house) to reach places higher up, change light bulbs, etc. It saves having to get a bulky step ladder, or stand on something not designed for standing on, like a chair or bucket. I made this one after mounting my power tools cubby unit, where I had to get up on a bucket to reach high enough to drive the screws.
Since I had some scraps of 1/2″; plywood left over from a few different projects, I decided I would use that to make the stool. It doesn’t take much, just a bit more than 1/4 of a full sheet and it’s the only material used, other than glue and brads.
First step was to cut all of the parts to size:
I’m not going to go into much detail in this, since it is a simple project and the plan and video cover all of the fine points. One tricky thing is how parts C are joined to Parts A – they need to be offset 1/2″; as shown in the photo above. They also need to be mirror image.
The semi-circular cutouts were just drawn with an 11″; light fixture (as shown in the video), since the curve is not critical.
The finished stool. I gave a single coat of polyurethane to give it some protection and keep it looking clean:
After using it for a while, I found that it was tippy and I would have to be careful not to topple it over. This is a flaw in this traditional design, and to fix it I added extra feet to each side:
Just pieces of 3/4″; plywood glued and screwed in place. They widen and lengthen the stance just enough to make the stool a lot more stable.
I made a short video of the build from start to finish: