Joinery Advise Required - How to attach seat to stool?

Hi There,



I've come to an impass in my design and would really appreciate some advice.



I'm in the process of building a prototype of a fairly simple stool and cant quite figure out how to attach the seat.

The stool itself is very basic, square 4 legs, 4 rails right at the top and two toward the bottom with another going between the bottom two.

The seat is a separate piece which is intended to appear floating 15mm above the stool (a couple of photos attached).



photo 1.jpgphoto 2.jpg









I have 3 ideas as to how i can attach the seat but i'm not sold on any of them for a variety of reasons.

1. loose tennons going virtically between the top rail and the seat about 25mm in from where the rail joins the leg. There would be 8 tennons in total, 2 on each rail. I dont like this idea because it would put all the pressure of the person sitting on the stool, on the rail and therfore on the MT joining the rail to the leg. Not sure how long this would last.


2. A dowel about 10-15mm in diameter in the top center of each leg. Not sure about this idea because it would have to go directly into the middle of the mitre of the seat... While the mitre has a spline in it im not sure how wise that would be. I'm in two minds about this because i kind of think that all the pressure would only be directly downward and may not actually cause a problem with the mitre.


3. Exten the legs them selves by 15mm and put a rebate on the two outside edges to give the impression of ending at the rail. The only reason in dont like this idea is because i tested the effect using a couple of small offcut squares and it blocks too much light coming throuhg the gap and i feel it ruins the effect a bit.

Does anyone have any other ideas on comments on 1 and 2 above?



Thanks in advance,

Mike

Attached Images

• photo 1.jpg (265.5 KB)


• photo 2.jpg (255.3 KB)