Beginning Woodworking
I've got a question sort of related to woodworking, indirectly. Supposed I wanted to build a stool. Just a simple design, with some flat kind of wood for the seat (plywood, maybe?) covered with some padding, and three simple legs consisting of rectangular prism shaped wood.<p>Even with my limited skills I could manage to find a way to attach the legs to the seat. What I have no idea how to do is figure out, given a particular choice of materials, how much to use. If I know my weight, and know that I'd use the stool for sitting and occasional for standing on when trying to reach something, how thick do I need to make the plywood seat if it is a given length and width, and what cross section do the legs need to bear that load?<p>I did the obvious thing, and looked for "Structural Engineering for Dummies" or something similar, but did not find anything. From the people I've talked to who build their own things from wood, they either build from published plans, or they use their intuition developed from seeing a lot of successful designs and make theirs similar.