Adirondack Chair

A quick little Adirondack chair from the TV show Rough Cut with Fine Woodworking. The model was drawn for plans created in LayOut. The challenging part was translating the full size drawing I received from the author into the SketchUp model.

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I like most of it. :slight_smile: I think this is one of those “easier to model than build” chairs

It might be easier to model than build but the build actually seems pretty straightforward. The hard part appears to be the back slats which are sawn out of single piece of wood.

they would need to be

that was a little teaser,… built in SU from plans drawn in LO… interesting workflow… can you explain further thx?

hmmm I read it as drawn for plans to be created in layout.

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Not quite. I created the plans in LayOut using the Sketchup model. I used a copy of the full size drawings done in pencil by the author to create the SketchUp file. There are two versions of the plans. One will be printed on Arch E paper and has full size patterns for all of the parts while the other version will be an electronic download designed to print on letter sized paper. It has scaled down patterns with grids so they can be transferred to the stock manually or the pages could be scaled up on a copier.

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haha, ok I though you had invented some left field way of developing SU Models :slight_smile:

Nah…

Like this?

Yep. That’s it.

Interesting. I wonder how comfortable that seat would be? Looks like your rear end would end up being squashed into the acute angle between seat slats and back slats. Elegant to look at though.

The seat slats form a shallow S-curve between the side rails and the flatten out at the back so the angle is not acute at a all.

OK, that makes sense.

curious…when you modeled this did you create the parts for the back the same way they would be created from the “slats sawn out of single piece of wood” ? .

No. I only drew one slat and made it a component. One long S-curve, Offset and connect the ends to get a face that can be extruded to make the slat width. In the shop, there would be a pattern for the front curve. The pattern is traced for the first slat and then most of the waste is cut away at the bandsaw. The pattern is tacked to the blank so a router with a bearing-guided straight bit can be used to clean up the curve. After that the slat is cut free at the bandsaw using a pivot fence. After the first slat is cut away, the pattern gets tacked on again as close to the sawn line as possible and the router cleans up the blank. It’s just a matter of going between the bandsaw and the router for the rest of the slats.

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the reason I asked that is. I formed 9 slats rotate arrayed them in the shape of the back … but becasue the slats are curved I had some difficulty trimming the tops and also because the lower width is crowded together slightly or the top splayed apart…I though maybe a different method was used to form the back in one piece and then break it apart in slats.

But I guess that’s the point of buying the plans :slight_smile:

I see. You’re asking how I modeled the slats. I drew one and made it a component. Then I made a radial array of them. The ones to the right of the center slat were flipped to make them mirrored relative to the ones left of center. Then I made the slats unique in pairs. The corresponding left and right slats are instances of the same component but no longer related to the others. To trim the tops, then, I made a “cutter” as a solid and used it to trim the tops of the slats. I used Eneroth’s Trim tool which only works in SU Pro but you could also use Bool Tools which works in Make as well as Pro. Of course since the slats are components, I only needed to trim the left hand ones and the center one to get the whole thing done. It’s similar to the process shown in this ancient video.

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I have an adirondak chair design that is super easy to build- I’ve filled my back yard up with them for years. I call them “Modirondak” because I kind of munged the classic angles/dimensions into Gerrit Rietveld’s Red and Blue chair.

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Excellent John. I might need to build some of those.