Since starting to work with wood 2008, the projects which have given me the most pleasure, and freedom to express, have been those projects where I have been contracted to make tables or chairs.
Chairs I particularly enjoy because there are hundreds, if not thousands of variations. After losing my workshop in 2012 (see House High Jinkery on my blog https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/Y1ekCB) I joined forces with another aspiring furniture maker and threw my energy into building us a workshop.
Workshop completed, I wanted to find a furniture piece that would showcase a variety of abilities and hopefully stike a chord with my customers. I got online and searched for inspiration. I live in a place where the hammock is very popular and thought about how to build a chair inspired by its simple design.
I saw the chair pictured above and instantly knew this was what I had been looking for. I don’t know if it has actually ever been made or if this is simply a computer rendering, maybe one of you tech savvy readers could tell me, but I was determined that I could make a real chair inspired by this picture.
The first challenge I faced was how to make the perfect curves you can see in the frame. I had made a rig earlier in the year which was capable of bending 12 mm smooth bar and used it to make up the legs for an office side table I had been commissioned to build. The tool was basic but did the job.
The table turned out quite nicely too, I think-
For the Hammock Chair I chose to use smooth 16mm steel bar for the frame as I was proficient with my arc welder by this time and knew the steel bar would be durable enough to perform. I set about modifying the basic bending tool I had already made and after much cutting and welding it looked very different. I named it the monster. Over time I have added to it making it a versatile apparatus I can use in many different ways, but more about that in later posts.
As you can see I used steel gate wheels combined with a bit of creative welding to make a tool capable of bending the 16 mm steel, cold, into perfect curves.
To make the double bends at the base of the chair the steel bar is passed between the 2 larger 4 inch bending wheels and their smaller, 1 1/2 inch satellite wheels. All four wheels rotate on axles which are welded onto the fork like structure which in turn is welded onto a 5 foot section of 2 inch steel pipe.
On the other end of the 2 inch pipe is a similar wheel setup but with just the single 3 inch wheel and accompanying 1 ½ inch satellite which is used to make the bend at the top of the back rest.
The principal section of the frame is made from one complete 6 meter long bar and the great advantage of the monster is that two curves can be made at the same time enabling me to get the geometry of the chair just right.
The actual seat pieces are cut from inch and a half thick pine boards and strung on slings of 4 mm, plastic coated stainless steel wire.
A couple of acrylic bushes are used to space out the wood from the steel frame, they look kinda neat too.
The wire passes through the bottom cross piece of the frame then up, through the wood sections and finally into the clamp system I put together nestled in the top curve.
And from the back
In all I made four of these chairs.
Sold two-
Gave one to a friend-
And kept one for myself-
There was a fifth chair made but I modified the design to make it much larger and more rigid.
It currently resides by my friend’s swimming pool and gets plenty of use.
