Woodworker's Journal 2004 Summer, страница 33

Whether you're sitting around a warm fire after a day in the boat, cooling your heels at camp after chasing upland game, or just leaning back and soaking up a couple of cold ones after you mow the lawn, it's nice to have a comfortable place to take a load off. These slide-together outdoor chairs are not a new idea; in fact, the inspiration for this updated white oak version was rolled out 20 years ago in the May/June 1984 issue of the Journal. I did spruce up the design a bit (with some help from my cohorts here at Woodworker's Journal!) by making them more compact when they are nested together for storage. We also added a few strategically placed cleats, to eliminate the chance of racking.

I chose white oak for building these chairs because it's so durable and because these chairs really don't eat up a lot of material — there are only about 12 board feet in each one. I raided my scrap bin for some of it. At a little over $3 a board foot, these chairs come in at a very reasonable price. Spanish cedar or cypress would also work well.

With your perfectly-sized templates complete, transfer the shapes onto the seat and backrest stock. Then band saw the pieces to shape, keeping just outside the pencil lines.

Getting Started: A Pair of Templates

I wanted to make a few of these chairs, and the thought of making all the curved side pieces one at a time was out of the question. Instead, I constructed a couple of

perfectly-sized templates (see the Seat and Backrest Sides Drawing on page 34) and traced around them to lay out a series of paired seat and backrest sides (pieces 1 and 2) on my hardwood stock. Then I carefully cut these pieces to shape on the band saw (see photo above), staying just a hair outside of the pencil line. I used double-sided carpet tape to attach the templates to the stock for template routing and added three small brads — just for insurance. With a 1/2" flush-trimming, bearing-guided router bit mounted in my router table, I was

Cleaning up your edges on a spindle sander takes just a few minutes. One of the nice things about template routing is that it leaves just a few machining marks that are a snap to remove.

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