The Adirondack chair has been sealed!

With temps this week well north of 70 degrees, I decided to apply the water sealant to the Adirondack chair before things get inevitably get cooler.  Thankfully, I had the time during my lunch break to get that done today.

The whole thing took a little less than an hour with the only problem being that my inexperience led to some sealant splashing on my pants legs.  Good thing those pants were on the way out, anyway.

Regardless, I'm very pleased with how it looks.  I'm also looking forward to using my experience with this chair to improve on this design with the idea being to make others for sale.

 

So close to completion....

I had some time today to work on the chair.  I evaluated a horizontal support on the back legs and decided against it.  I used a rough toothed rasp to round out the edges of the boards then followed up with coarse grit sandpaper in the pad sander.  In the end, everything was sanded down nicely.

Once all that was complete, I washed everything down to remove the fine layer of sawdust that coated the chair.  It was at that point that I read the application instructions on the water sealant and learned that I need 50 degree temps for 48 hrs after application and a well-ventilated area.

Looks like the chair will be shelved for a few months until the temps rise enough to seal the wood.  In the meantime, I'll take measurements to create drawings to replicate the final product should that ever be necessary.

Less is more for the Adirondack chair

Today was the first day since Monday that I was able to work on the chair some.  I attached the mid-back support to the upright pieces, measured and cut the curves for the armrests and back, mounted the top-back support, and chopped and dropped the whole thing 4".

When I was at the plot Tuesday, I measured the maximum possible depth under the arbor that could accommodate the chair.  Thankfully, when I sat in it today, I found that I had a similar (but less pronounced) problem as my dad had: my feet were on tip toe when seated.  Thus: by lowering the height to what is more comfortable, I also shortened the base.  As a result, the chair is now 39.5" long which fits in the allowable space with an inch to spare.

Now that the armrest and chair back work is done, the only other piece to make is a horizontal support to join the rear legs.  Once I've sanded it and applied a water sealant to the whole thing, the chair is finished.

It's an actual Adirondack chair!

Work was delayed for a few hours due to a good bit of icing in the DC area this morning.  I split the time between spending some time with the wife and kids and working on the Adirondack chair.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to get anything done Tues/Wed/Thurs so I'll have to wait until Friday to do more.

Today I finished making the upright pieces for the seat back, made both armrests, made armrest supports, and mounted the mid-level seat back support.  That took a little bit longer than anticipated due to shearing off one of the bolts mounting the left armrest to the back support.  I had to remove what was left inside the armrest and then drilled out the armrest and support holes to a slightly larger diameter to avoid repeating that mistake.

I'm quite happy with how things are turning out.  The chair is quite comfortable.  The only downside is the footprint of the chair is approx 4' long whereas the arbor is only 3' deep.  That leaves an extra 1' to figure out what to do with it. 

Still to do:

• Mount upright seat backs to mid-level support.
• Mount the upper support.
• Curve the front of the armrests.
• Curve the seat back pieces.
• Evaluate need for a rear leg horizontal support.
• Sand everything.
• Consider applying a water seal to everything.

More progress on the Adirondack chair

I ended up with an early lunch break today.  As a result, I was able to make some significant progress on the chair.  It also helped that I didn't have to do a bunch of trig to calculate angles.  The hardest part was ripping a few of the 1"x3" boards for seat supports; most annoying was figuring out how high I want the back to be.

Here's what it looks like at this point.

Unfortunately, I'm about out of unpainted lumber for the project.  I'm hoping to take another trip to The Forklift in the next few days to pick up a few more 1"x3" boards, 1"x6" boards for the armrests, and probably try to dig up a 2"x2" board so I don't have to rip a 2"x4" for the topmost horizontal back support.

Progress on Adirondack Chair

For anyone reading this, I imagine this seems more like a carpentry blog rather than anything dealing with gardening.  For that, I apologize, but with very few things that can be done outdoors at this point in the winter I do what I can.

I've been working on the Adirondack chair that I intend to place under the arbor.  After much looking around for ready-made plans for chairs and finding nothing that I liked, I decided to design one myself.  As a result, sorting out a lot of the angles and ergonomic measurements has made things take a while.  Designing the seat/rear leg support and the front support took a while.  It took two days of tinkering to finish making cuts and to mount the first side together.

Today I made a good bit more progress during my lunch break. As a result, I have something worth sharing.