Knocking off a garden/deck chair (phase 1: Proof of concept)

Well, this time in the wood works shop, thinking of what to make out of deceased tree carcases next, I remembered pondering over a garden chair design I had seen in a local mail order magazine of sorts.

 

It looked like a ruthlessly simple thing, yet quite funky at the same time. although miniaturizing it would require some adjustment to the dimensions, and overall construction.

 

As usual the material of choice was some 18mm thick pine glue board... which I cut up to 10x5mm strips on my table saw.

 

wood144

 

Now, the easiest way would probably had been to go to a hobby store and see if there was bamboo or anything similar already close to that dimension, but alas no such luxuries for me, so trying my luck not to cut off my fingers with the saw it was...

 

Anyways, with a suitable amount of strip stock in order, it was time to cut them to length.

 

wood145

 

Now i am not giving out length measurements for A) this is a commercial item in real life, but if I could figure out the rough dimensions so can you.

 

and B), In the end I didnt quite figure out the dimensions as I thought, and it will require some more fiddling to get perfect... anyways...

 

The next step was to drill holes into the pieces to attach them together:

wood146

 

Now I did not just drill a hole at the end of the sticks, but I made a drilling jig onto my bench drill, and all holes were drilled measuring their distances from one end of the sticks. This was due to eliminating problems with possible discrepancies in the lengths of the strips.

 

Then its just a matter of laying up the pieces onto suitable sticks of material:

 

wood147

 

I quickly swapped the matches in the middle to bamboo kebab skewers, which were much more adequate in terms of length, and flex.

 

wood148

 

At the end when all pieces are sandwiched together, its just a matter of nipping up the ends...

 

wood149

 

The design calls for pinning the bars that make up the legs together so it wont collapse on itself, but I didn't do this yet, since I ended up having to massage the dimensions anyways..

 

But here's Melty trying it on for size, and displaying the slightly too long front section:

 

wood150

 

The result so far isn't too shabby for something cobbled together in a few hours, but pointed out the obvious measurement issues, and also some things about actually making the pieces, like for instance needing a far better jig to do the drilling.

 

But I may or may not return to this project ... since as usual there's other things to do as well..

 

thanks for looking so far.

That's pretty neat. Thanks for sharing.

That's a neat chair! Better than what I would be able to do right now. Thanks for sharing!

That is so cool! Looks easier than I would have expected.