Chair Legs from the Home Center

Plus some good news at the bottom of the entry.

There are lots of products at a home center that can be used as legs for a stick chair. Most of the ideas that other woodworkers have suggested are either 1) way too complicated for a beginner (laminating the legs up from thin oak stock, for example) 2) or way too expensive (using hickory sledge handles would cost $79.92 for a set of four legs).

The goal is to find the strongest legs possible that require the least amount of modification and cost as little as possible. Oh, and there has to be enough stock on hand at the store that you can be picky and buy wood with the straightest grain and zero knots, or other defects that would weaken the legs.

To begin the search, let’s first figure out how much a set of red oak legs would cost from a Midwestern lumberyard so we can figure out how much the home center is screwing us (or not).

I buy red oak for my legs in 2"-thick planks. I can’t just ask my lumber lord to sell me a board of red oak for legs that measures 2" x 8" x 20". That’s not how …