Well hang in there Pat. We're not finished yet, but we're get'n close.
I gave up trying to drill three tiny holes for three tiny wires in the electric service's weather head, since it really didn't matter. So I drilled on large hole and installed all three wires in the same hole and held them in there with a drop of CA. After installing the wires, I masked the clear meter glass and sprayed a quick coat of Tamiya Bare Metal.
The three lead wires tie into the lugs that mount on the building wall, and these, in turn, have steel cables that come from the power pole which supports the three-phase 220v wires that go to the meter. I measured these little cast metal lugs and came up with 0.032" so I drill the building for this size, but it was a bit undersized, so I opened it up to 0.039". I was able to get the lugs attached and held them with some thin CA.
Then the new stools arrived from Mini-etch, and I got started on them immediately. Unfortunately, they cut these out the same homogeneous 1/32" maple with the same fragility as the first batch. But this time, I tried something different. I lightly soaked the upper spreader bar with thin CA to harden the maple. Since the stools that I designed are too tall, I cut off the leg from just above the bottom spreader bar so the bottom bar didn't need hardening. This greatly strengthened the upper one and, while I did break quite a few of them, I did get a bunch of usable stools and made the whole deal work out.
I also made other adjustments which both sped up the building and produced a better build. First, the little square notches on the seat base were not equal size and some were definitely too small. This would have the effect of pushing one of the legs out of position which made assembly more difficult. I also changed the sequence. Instead of attempting to glue the leg to the seat base AND glue the spreaders to the adjacent leg at the same time, I glued all four legs to the base and then carefully held each spreader in contact with the adjacent leg. A small application of thin CA to this junction tied it all together.
I got 9 perfect stools built and a few more with one spreader missing that broke after assembly.
I don't need this many to populate the cafe. This will give me a bit of a cushion since I'm sure I'll break at least one more before this is all over. To stain them I just dipped the entire stool into a can of Minwax Red Mahogany Stain and absorbed the excess on a paper towel. Here're the lot of them waiting to dry for tomorrow's session.
I'll put the electrical service in place tomorrow and install the stools. With them in place, I'll get the window in and the steps. Then I'll turn my attention back to the outdoor light and finish that up. We're just about done folks.
