Sellers Woven Stool

It's been a while since I've done a Paul Sellers project, but this one caught my eye because of the weaving.  I've done a couple projects that involved weaving, but this was a new pattern for me.  It's a simple project: four legs, 8 cylindrical rails and Danish paper cord weaving.

The legs for this stool splay (and rake) 3 degrees.  I bought 7/8" hardware store dowels for the rails.  They were all undersized, so my mortises were 13/16 and I shaved the rails to fit.  Here are some pictures of the build - the captions have relevant info.

Four leg blanks squared up and marked for front/back and left/right

Mortises marked out

Boring the mortises about 3/4" deep.  This 97 deg angle block guides the bit.

After mortises done on two pairs of mating sides, shaped the legs.

Checking one side frame for leg parallelity.  I was careful when gluing
them up to get it right.

The mortises for joining the two side frames were done after the glue had dried.
You can see the perpendicular tenon at the bottom of this mortise.

Due to the shaping of the legs, I had to make an 87 deg guide to bore the lower mortises.

First dry fit.  All the tenons will be fox-wedged into their mortises.

Glue up was not too stressful, but I did need to hammer the joints home
with a bit more vigor than I wanted.  Titebond III was used.  Once dry, 
I gave the frame three coats of shellac, sanding in between coats.

Now for the weaving.  I'm using Danish paper cord.  I bought a
10 pound roll of the stuff a couple years ago.  This'll last me quite a while.
I think I used about 300 feet on this stool.

After the first few wraps: note the H-shaped cord carrier in the picture.
It helps to corral the cord when weaving.  But I couldn't use the carrier
after the hole in the center got too small.

Here's a close-up of one corner after a dozen or more wraps.
Not exactly perfect, but passable.

Making a lot of progress.  I stopped here after 2-3 hours.
Another 2-3 hours the next day and it was done.

Here's the underside and I see that I should have paid more attention to this.
See the two angled cords where my fingers are?  I think this is the reason
that my weave wasn't quite even on top.

At about 2/3rds complete, I stuffed cardboard between the top and bottom.

And here's the top view of the completed stool.

And a glamour shot of the stool.

The underside reveals the places where I tied on new lengths of cord.
It also shows some areas that are not woven evenly.

I like weaving, but it is tough on the hands.  Maybe sooner than later I'll try another simple stool to get more practice with this weave pattern.  I'd like to see if more focus on what's going on with the underside will lead to a more consistent pattern on the top.