I decided to make my husband an Adirondack Chair for Christmas. I had a purchased plan, plus 3 or 4 others from magazines and the internet. From my online research, many people said the "typical" Adirondack chair, or Muskoka chair, as it's known as around here, was hard to get out of. They do sit quite low to the ground with a steep back slant to the seat. Since I wanted my husband to be able to get back out of the chair (for obvious reasons), I decided on the "improved design" Norm Abram Adirondack Chair in Popular Woodworking Magazine, and also at their website.
The article, with parts list and step-by step directions used to be available free online, but it is now available as a download: Popular Woodworking: Norm Abrams Adirondack Chair
I used rough pine for the chair, which meant I needed to pick out pieces without loose knots, and with areas that looked clear as possible for the parts I had to make, and then joint and plane them to size. The thickness of all the parts is 3/4", the legs, front crosspiece and seat slats are rectangular, with no need to make fancy cuts on. The tops of the back slats, the arms, arm brackets, side members and rear crosspieces need to be cut to shape. I used my jigsaw but a bandsaw would be easier (I don't have one yet).
Jigsaw cutting the side member:
All the pieces laid out:
Closer photo of just the back slats:
The chair is put together with screws as well as some carriage bolts. For the screws I plug them afterward, so each place a screw goes needs a hole for the screw as well as a larger hole for the plug.
**This "how-to" will be a blog post in the near future**
These next two photos show the arm with it's three large holes and the front crosspiece, lower rear crosspiece and leg with two large holes (on each side), waiting for the plugs to go in:
Now you can see the upper rear crosspiece is bolted on and the holes are all plugged in the arms, legs and front crosspiece:
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Side view:
While the chair was at this stage I painted it with 3 coats of exterior house paint. After making similar child size chairs (
here ) I realized it would be much easier to paint the slats before they were attached to the chair. It's hard to get the paint in between the slats, so the chair base was painted and just the backs and sides of the back slats and seat slats. I couldn't paint the fronts yet because the screws still had to be attached and plugged.
All the base painted and back slats (with just their backs and sides painted) attached:
Two views of the chair all painted:
Since my husband is a Montreal Canadiens fan, I decided to put the team logo on the chair. I found it online and printed it on my printer to the size I needed. Then I cut it out and traced around the parts to transfer it to the chair. I used acrylic craft paints for the white and blue, and some painters tape to keep the lines straight.
Here it is:
This is a very comfortable chair and he was happy to get it as his present!
Update: Here's the post on finally finishing my chair!
Labels: furniture, pine
