Welding a Rusty Nuts Shop Stool

On the YouTube channel FinnCrafted, they turned a band of steel, some rod stock, and a bucket of dusty and rusty old nuts into a cool shop stool. Every metalworking shop needs one of these.

The build was pretty staright-forward. First, a circle was formed from a piece of old metal strapping material. A brake drum was used as the form.

With the hoop frame of the stool established and welded, it was time to sort out and arrange all of the nuts inside of the hoop. Care was obviously taken to fully fill the space with nuts.

Now it was just a question of welding every nut to every other nut and all of the nuts to the hoop frame.

With the nuts welded in place, a wire wheel was used on an angle grinder to smooth everything out.

FinnCrafted then created a temporary wooden jig on his on work table and began assembling the wire legs of the stool using some suitable rod stock.

With the seat finished and the legs welded together, the only thing left to do was to weld the legs and the seat together.

And voila! A sturdy and maybe even comfortable shop stool that is metal as hell. I sat on a similar stool years ago in a friend’s machine shop and it was, in fact, surprisingly comfortable. And hey, the nut holes mean that the seat even gets air flow. Besides being appropriate in a machine shop, I could also see a set of these stools looking amazing in a dinning room/kitchen/bar done in an industrial-style home decor.