Wooden chairs fit perfectly into the interior of a study, a relaxation area near the fireplace, or a reading corner. Wherever you place this piece of furniture, it will create a zone of comfort and coziness.
Natural materials used in its production bring freshness to indoor spaces and make outdoor recreation areas, gazebos, and verandas more comfortable.
You can make a decent wooden chair for your home or cottage with your own hands, with minimal woodworking skills. You just need to use the most common tool, which almost every home craftsman has, and follow the tips given below.
What kind of chairs can you make with your own hands?
Before you start working, you need to clearly understand what types of wooden chairs can really be made at home:
- soft. Convenient option for home. For manufacturing, you will need to assemble a frame on which the soft upholstery will be attached;
- sliding An excellent option for saving space in the house. Their design is somewhat more complex than that of an ordinary wooden chair;
- folding. Just right for going out into nature. The complexity of manufacturing is compensated by its functionality;
- Kentucky. A simple construction of materials will require only bars. Wire or pins act as fasteners;
- on wheels - an option convenient for the elderly and disabled. The most critical stage in manufacturing will be the correct installation of the wheels, because such a chair should move effortlessly.
You can slightly modify an ordinary chair by attaching a high back to it. Both hard and soft models are made, it all depends on the imagination and skills of the master.
Sometimes you want to make a rocking chair with your own hands. The main difficulty here is preparing the arched base. But this problem can also be solved.
Varieties of plywood chair designs
There are a large number of modifications of plywood chairs, but they are mainly divided into two types:
- Rocking chair;
- An armchair in the form of a chair or stool.
The British take credit for the design of the rocking chair. It is believed that one of the craftsmen created it based on a crib on runners.
Experience can be gained by following step-by-step instructions.
Americans dispute this version, believing that it was Benjamin Franklin who invented this interior element. By the way, he is the owner of a patent for a rocking chair.
It happens:
- on skids;
- on a spring mechanism;
- on a pendulum mechanism.
Armchairs like a chair or stool may differ in the presence or absence of armrests and a backrest.
The most important advantage of a DIY plywood chair is its price, which is much lower than the store price.
Every year, designers come up with many variations of this furniture, sometimes not always suitable for its intended use.
Hand-made chairs are in no way inferior to expensive factory ones, and sometimes even better - more original and reliable.
Main material
The reliability of the future chair, its stability, and ability to cope with loads and various climatic conditions will depend on the choice of wood and the method of final processing. You can use an old chair or armchair as a base, having previously disassembled it into its components, or, conversely, modify existing furniture.
A material such as chipboard, which is used to make furniture, is not suitable for chairs, especially garden chairs. The reason for this is limited moisture resistance. In addition, chipboard is significantly inferior in strength to laminated and solid wood.
Natural wood is an absolutely harmless, environmentally friendly material, although not the cheapest. Wood is best suited for making a chair with your own hands. Before starting work, the bars and boards must be inspected for cracks, knots and other defects. Next, the material is sanded, a protective coating is applied, and after that, assembly can begin.
Note! Among all types of wood, preference should be given to alder, ash, birch or oak.
The reason is simple - the unusual pattern of the fibers is combined with the durability and wear resistance of products made from them. It should be added that chairs made of such wood, when properly processed, do not crack over time and do not creak.
Wood is popular in furniture production not only because of its beauty and naturalness. It easily tolerates loads and shocks and is practically resistant to plastic deformation. The only disadvantages are flammability and deformation under the influence of moisture. The last problem is again solved by competent final processing.
How to choose?
The purpose of furniture is comfort in human life. Therefore, when purchasing, you must carefully examine the entire structure. Leg stability is critical. They must have special pads that protect the flooring from damage. The coating on the metal should not be chipped or damaged. The quality of the upholstery is of no small importance. Leather has a long service life and a respectable appearance. The leather is easy to care for – just a damp cleaning is enough. If you choose fabric upholstery, you should remember that natural ones are pleasant to the touch, but are not durable - these are velvet, velor. Mixed fabrics, such as jacquard and tapestry, last a long time and have a beautiful texture.
If you are lucky and are about to purchase an openwork plywood product, high-quality gluing of the parts is important. The product must be stable, not creak or wobble. Sit on it, experience the quality and comfort. Lean back, pay attention to the armrests. The entire structure should feel like a single monolith, stand firmly on legs when you get up from it and sit down.
Simple chair for the garden
Having decided to make a chair for the dacha with your own hands from wood, having selected the drawings, you should not immediately take on complex projects. The first pancake is often lumpy, and to get the hang of it, you can try to implement the simplest options.
The simplest chair for a summer house consists of curved sides, bases, drawers and slats for the seat. Moreover, the only difficulty lies in cutting out the sidewalls. For production, plywood and wooden planks are used.
The sequence of actions is as follows:
- The sidewalls are cut out with a jigsaw from 30 mm thick euro plywood. Next, the parts are chamfered with an ordinary grinder or a manual milling cutter, after which the future spars are processed with emery cloth;
- the drawers (crossbars holding the sides together) are cut from the same plywood. The result should be 3 parts with dimensions 1200 x 100 mm. Sandpaper comes into play again;
- for a seat that smoothly flows into the back, you need to cut 35 identical strips 1200 mm long. The material will be timber with a section of 50 x 25 mm. The parts are chamfered and the surface is sanded with sandpaper;
- Next, you need to tie the sidewalls together with drawstrings. To do this, points are marked on one of them in three places, which are transferred to the second sidewall. Using an 8 mm drill, drill through holes at the designated points. Using a 5 mm drill, counter holes are drilled at the ends of all frames. Confirmats are used to connect elements;
- It's time to attach the bars that will form the seat. To do this, drill 2 holes on each side of all the blocks, and use self-tapping screws for fastening. To recess the fastener heads into the wood, the holes are pre-countersinked;
- All that remains is to treat the surface of the chair. To remove all cracks and dents, the wood is sanded. Next, the surfaces are treated with fine sandpaper, after which the wood is coated with a primer. The final stage is 3 thin layers of varnish.
Such a homemade chair for a summer house does not require much effort or complex measurements and calculations to make. However, the end result will be a truly chic piece of garden furniture. Experienced craftsmen can try making a more complex garden chair from bent plywood. This is where both experience working with wood and a truly creative approach to the process will come in handy.
Preparation of the drawing
Surely, the diagram of the chair you like is freely available on the Internet. It specifies the exact dimensions, necessary materials, and tools for manufacturing. If you are not satisfied with the presented models, you can study several of the most attractive ones and model your own circuit.
By making a chair from plywood, you can not only create a high-quality piece of furniture, save money, but also get great pleasure from the work.
In order to make a drawing correctly, design your chair on paper, ideally from several angles. Visually divide it into main parts and draw them. You may need patterns, a pencil or marker, a ruler, a tape measure, a corner, and scissors. Select sizes based on your own needs.
A rocking chair made of plywood with your own hands is an excellent option for relaxing in the country, in a country house, or just in nature.
Step-by-step manufacturing instructions:
- Transfer your drawing from paper to a sheet of plywood;
- Saw the parts of your chair;
- Sand the cut areas;
- Pre-assemble your chair without using fastening parts. Use helpers. This is necessary to deliberately eliminate shortcomings.
- Glue the necessary parts;
- Drill holes for self-tapping screws.
- Connect all the parts together.
Don’t be afraid to experiment; as a result, you will get a comfortable, beautiful and original piece of furniture.
Features of a shell-type chair
When making a shell, you will need skill in using a jigsaw, the ability to transfer the dimensions of parts from drawings to the material, and experience in deforming plywood in order to bend it in the correct shapes and directions.
Note! When cutting out parts, it is important to achieve smooth movements of the jigsaw, which is quite difficult for an untrained person.
When making a shell chair without experience working with bent plywood, you can use pieces of scrap wood to train your hand for practice. To fasten the parts of such a chair, wood glue is mainly used, and clamps are used for fixation. You can use self-tapping screws as fasteners, but in this case you will have to drown their heads in the wood fibers.
Once the bent plywood shell chair is fully assembled, all bumps and chips are sanded, after which the surface is cleaned of dirt and dust. To give the product an aesthetic appearance, it is coated with several layers of varnish.
Application of pallets
To make some chairs, there is no need to look for drawings or practice wood processing. It is enough to take wooden products as a basis, which almost no one pays attention to. One of them is a pallet, or pallet, a rigid wooden container for transporting goods. A chair made from pallets will really look unusual and creative. Another advantage of using this product is the high quality and strength of the wood from which it is made.
The pallets are dismantled and all the nails are taken out. The elements of the future chair must be sanded, and then the tray must be assembled in the reverse order.
The seat of the chair is formed by stacking pallets on top of each other to the desired height (usually 2 pieces are enough). The backrest also serves as a pallet, fixed perpendicular to the seat. By sawing the pallet crosswise into 2 parts, you can use it as armrests.
Before assembly, the parts are varnished in several layers. To ensure that the back and seat are not hard and look really chic, foam pillows in some unusual covers are placed on them.
Three-legged chair model
Recently, unusual models of chairs with only three legs have gained popularity. Often such chairs are called shells, due to their involuntary similarity.
The entire structure includes one piece with two legs, one piece with one rear support leg, armrests, and nine semicircular pieces from which the back and seat are assembled.
The model is distinguished by its original design and ease of execution.
Self-tapping screws or nails are rarely used to make such chairs. The main function of holding the entire structure together is performed by glue.
For the comfort of this type of chair, it is advisable to use pillows.
The drawing is redrawn on graph paper, then applied and traced along the contour.
Solid wood chair
Making any furniture from solid wood at home will require a lot of time and effort from the craftsman, as well as the availability of special tools and equipment. In fact, the array can be used by beginners in their work, but the same chairs without the use of finishing techniques will look, to put it mildly, boring. But if you decorate the products with various cuts and use wood carving skills, you can achieve a good look.
To fasten parts made from solid wood, one of two main methods is used.
Bonding - gluing elements together with edges pre-processed on a jointer. This option is the simplest. To connect two parts, you need to form a ridge on one of them, and a groove on the other. As an option, two grooves are made into which the strip is inserted. The second method is docking. Wood glue and wooden dowels are used.
Tool for the job
To design furniture items, you need a special tool. Here's what's most important:
- cutting tools (electric jigsaw, knife, circular saw);
- fasteners (screws, nails, glue, furniture bolts);
- auxiliary tools - screwdrivers, hexagon (for bolts), drill (for holes in plywood for fasteners);
- measuring devices (this is, first of all, a tape measure and a pencil, a level and a square will also not be superfluous);
- everything for finishing, from sandpaper to varnish, paint, stain, etc.
