Saturday, July 8, 2023

Lawn chair, lawn chair, chairs, armchair

I finished the first lawn chair, with a pause of a day to grow some more muscle for pushing the awl and for driving screws through fabric that constantly wanted to twist.

There was some fiddly work that went into each connection.  I'd looked through our hardware hoard, and I have a few T-shaped pins from a retired lawn chair, with the "T" being as wide as a strip of webbing, which is wrapped around it, and then the short stem of the "T" is inserted through the webbing and into the chair frame, and holds the webbing in place while spreading out the strain and neatening the ends.

For a similar effect, I used a strip of milk jug plastic for the wide part of the "T", and a screw, with a washer, through it for the stem.  I think the plastic will not hold up that well in the longer term, but it's good enough for now, and I could be wrong since the fabric will protect it from the sun a lot and my lawn chairs are in the shade for most of the day.

With the second chair, the connectors were short bolts that ran through grommets in the ends of the webbing--which were carefully folded into points.  My fabric wouldn't fold down that far, so I did basically the same thing as the first chair, but I saved the grommets and re-used them as washers.

Most of the assembly happened outdoors, and the work for the second chair was spread over three days; it had more bands than the first chair.

The finished lawn chairs have been holding up so far.  They look nice, except for the one chair's arms still being deteriorating plastic.  Which I will probably replace with wood at some point.

I have three other chair projects, and a table project, lined up indoors.  One of them is a tapestry armchair a child bought at a yard sale, which needs major repairs on the springs.

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