Spent a couple hours on Sunday cutting out the various curves and whatnot for the side rails, back rails, arms, and the feet for the side table. Half way through all the cuts my band saw blade broke so I had to finish off with the jigsaw.
I also cut the tapers necessary for the back slats of the chair – those were a pain. I have a taper jig for my table saw but the stock for the back slats was just too long for it. I couldn’t figure out a good way to cut them so in the end I just eyeballed it on the table saw, following the lines I had marked – not perfect, but it got done. After cutting those, I laid them out on the floor and marked a line for the curve at the top, then used the jigsaw to cut that as well.
I’ve been wanting to make an Adirondack chair ever since I put in the fire pit in our backyard. I finally decided to build one and found a set of plans that looked decent. So this afternoon I spent a few hours making my initial cuts:
What really saved me time was this software. It automatically figures out the best arrangement of material pieces from a given set of stock. All you have to do is plug in the numbers and it does all the rest. This is the cut diagram it gave me based on using 9 pieces of 1x6x8 cedar boards:
As you can see, it would’ve taken forever to figure that all out by hand.
I’m also trying something different for keeping track of all the boards; I’m using little stickers with letters on them corresponding with the materials list from the original plans. This is in place of writing directly on the boards which I would’ve had to sand off later.
Domenick Naccarato is a creative director, an amateur woodworker, an artist, a photographer, a husband, and a father. When not otherwise busy working in front of a computer, building some piece of furniture, fixing something around the house, painting, taking pictures, or making wine, he is usually found with his wife and two daughters at their home in the Lehigh Valley.
