The Lawn Chair Build: Making Mattias Wandel's chair/discussion and plans

Hi Everyone,

Well, summer has arrived and this is the prime woodworking time of the year for me so it's time for a project.

I think I've mentioned Mattias Wandel on the blog before but for those of you who don't know who he is, he's a Canadian engineer who makes all sorts of precision machinery and other things out of wood. The items he makes are for the most part complex and they seem to work perfectly, which is amazing since the actual machinery parts are wood. Anyway, he put up plans for a lawn chair that has a contured back and seat which makes the chair comfortable to sit in and that sits upright more than an adirondack chair does. I've been wanting to build this for a couple of years now and now is the time to do it.

Discussion
I'm going to build the chair for my husband for Father's Day which in the US is on June 21. I'm going to make it out of western red cedar which is commonly used to build decking here in the US. It's lovely wood, it's not hard, and it will hold up well out of doors. As my husband likes to sit out doors and read, this should be a perfect gift for him.

Plans
You can purchase a complete set of plans from Mattias' website by clicking here. And you can see a video of him making a chair on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/ojfOXc5QDzM and you can see it right here on the blog:

During the build, which will take place over several blog postings, I'll refer to this video and I'll also post photographs of what I'm doing.

I bought a copy of the plans and I received a large file with the plans in both metric and inches. The plans contain instructions, tons of photos, a cut list, and templates which can be printed out over several sheets of paper to help cut out some of the more complex shapes. I read over all the material and I've printed out and placed into a notebook:

The cut list,
The lawn chair plans,
The file named Building the Frame,
And a file named Adding Boards to the Frame.

So the first thing I'm going to do is to assemble and make the templates for the framework out of some scrap plywood I've got. After that I'll purchase the lumber and cut out everything and then last of all I'll assemble the chair and apply a finish.

So this is our project for next week or so. So grab some coffee and drop by the wood shop. I'm at it again!

Stay tuned,
VW