An impulse

I've got the sudden urge to build something from wood.  I was thinking about a three-legged stool.  Then I started looking online at plans, and I wasn't really enamored of the whole glue-the-legs-on thing.  Using screws seemed like it would make for a sturdier stool.

Then I thought, why use just a single screw to hold a leg on?  Why not use brackets?  So I started thinking about attaching stool legs with brackets.

Then I started thinking about the rigidity of the thing and the torque that would necessarily be put upon it if the legs were angled outwards at all.  I decided some cross-brace-like thing would be a good idea.

Then I realized my idea was leading towards an inexorably larger and heavier stool, so I started thinking about hinged legs that fold out of the way for storage.

Hinges, though, might fold up at the wrong time with disastrous results, so it's a good idea to have a way of locking them in place.  So I started thinking about locking hinges and similar devices.

After all that thinking, I'm not sure I want to build a stool anymore.  But if I do, it'll be pretty awesome.