Norm Abrams

Adirondack

Chair

Editor Steve Shanesy builds an improved Adirondack chair with Norm Abram in The New Yankee Workshop. Build the chair and learn how Abram works.

I've become keenly aware throughout the years that patience allows time for opportunities to come along that might never have been possible. Such is the case with this Adirondack chair built in The New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abram.

Although projects similar to this one are rather common fare for most woodworking magazines, Popular Woodworking hasn't offered one to readers for more than 10 years. The project has been discussed, of course, but for one reason or another, it never happened. Then one day the phone rings and a representative of "The New Yankee Workshop" asks if we'd like to work with Abram to build the most popular project ever shown on the show.

Abram would build a chair and give it away as a promotion for the show and I'd build a duplicate as a

proj ect for the Popular Woodworking readers. Perfect!

OK, some of you are certainly wondering, "What is it like working with Abram right there in The New Yankee Workshop?" So let's get that part out of way. The most surprising thing was just how "Norm-al" it was, if you'll pardon the pun.

When you pare away all the myths and misinforma

tion, Abram is just a very likeable, easy-going, hard-working, down-to-earth woodworker in a reasonably well-equipped, but not extravagantly so, woodshop. He was very much at home there. And it's not a TV studio set with woodworking equipment, but a real woodshop. How fancy? I've seen far more extravagant shops belonging to home woodworkers than this one.

Working with Abram was fun, to be sure. But I spent years working in commercial shops building hundreds of projects while working with others. And while Abram is a celebrity, his pleasant personality and easygoing manner made me feel right at home, too. (To learn more about Abram and his shop see our Great Woodshops column on page 34.)

An Improved Adirondack Design

Now back to the project at hand: After getting acquainted at The New Yankee Workshop, Abram and I first inspected the original Adirondack he built, one based largely on a design his father had used years ago. It had weathered well and withstood the elements for more than a decade in continuous outdoor duty. He explained it was made from cypress, an excellent choice for outdoor projects,

by Steve Shanesy with Norm Abram

Comments or questions? Contact Steve at 513-531-2690 ext. 1238 or steve.shanesy@fwpubs.com.

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Popular Woodworking August 2005