3 LEVELS of Adirondack Chairs -DIY to PRO Build

hey it's summertime which means you need somewhere to sit outside so we're doing three levels of adirondack chairs let's go i'm jordan this is bear we're going to do the beginner adirondack chair so all you really need is some two-by-materials that you can get your local box store circular saw and a drill and tape measure so i went ahead off camera and i squared up my boards because lumber that comes from box stores typically isn't square if you don't have the tools no worries you don't have to do it it just makes life a little easier and we have the tools so i figured why not you can make all these cuts using the miter saw if you have it but if not all you really need is a circular saw square and a tape measure so let's break down this [Music] so now we are on to the legs but on the legs you have to do two 20 degree cuts and this might be intimidating without a miter saw but actually you can use a speed square so this is going to be your pivot point you hold that and then you just slide this side until it is parallel with the bottom edge and that's 20 so then this is 20 degrees you can actually clamp this down to give you a guide if you're using a circular saw we got everything cut now it's time to assemble news team assemble we're gonna make the frame first you'll have a plan so follow the plants buy the plant build it god bless america it helps to lay out things and we're gonna pre-drill these as well these screws say you don't have to but i always recommend it so you don't blow out wood make sure you place your screws nicely so you don't want to plan on covering them putty kind of decent not super diy for this part i'm going to use pocket holes if you plan on doing a lot more projects it's really worth to have if you don't want to get one what you can do is call toenail the screws in you just come in at an angle these screws are going to be relatively hidden so it doesn't matter which method you do this is just a little easier and faster gives it a little more strength but whatever you're comfortable with and whatever is in your budget [Music] uh i got the seat pan in now i'm doing the back so i waited to do the back support to put that in at the end because i wanted to figure out how much spacing i wanted back here if you're worried about getting the angle on this right is just make sure this board is flush with your legs because they're already at 20 degrees that's going to give you that 20 degree incline or reflex you would say just moving this up i took an extra piece of wood and i cut it to 19 and a half so that this way this stays up see how it flexes put that up it'll help you keep this nice and square as long as you have a flat surface go ahead and screw in the back slats i forgot to do this when i was building the frame but the reason we did this 20 degree cut is kind of give it a nicer look i put the front end up on some scraps then take another piece of scrap and we're going to draw a straight line across and cut that off and it's going to give it a nice look actually it turned out really nice probably around this over because it's a little sharp you did it probably could have made the head a little longer there what do you think their first project huh yeah all i really left to do is sand it and since i'm going to paint this i'm going to use bondo to fill in all the holes and imperfections in the wood because you'll never tell whenever you hit it with that paint and i'm not going to bore you guys with that footage so that's it for the beginner chair i'm going to sand it finish it and then paint it and yeah this thing it only took me about two hours actually it's a nice little weekend project do some bonding with your dog or your significant other by a bear all right guys i'm sam and i'm gonna be building the intermediate project unfortunately i'm doing it alone i didn't know we were supposed to bring a dog for this project i'll work on it for next time so for the intermediate build we're going to upgrade that material and go with an outdoor friendly wood we're going to use cedar on this one we're even going to get a little bit fancy and use the cnc to make templates to make it easier than ever to replicate and make multiple of these projects so like i said we're gonna use cnc'd templates i had jordan who's holding the camera help me with some of the cad stuff because i'm computer illiterate but don't worry because if you buy the plans for i think mine and john's jordans you don't really need cnc templates because they're rectangles but these ones were getting a little fancier so these are going to be available both i think digital and physical versions we are going to make these with the templates because there's a couple of really important benefits to doing so one we can make identical parts that a both the single chair looks more symmetrical and if you are going to make a bunch of them it would be exactly the same so this board here is what it's going to be the arms you know just threw this one on here got a pencil i traced this one around don't draw on it all right so you have the one right now i'm coming over to this one and as i was about to do it notice right here uh oh we gotta give a knock so then i started playing around with it i could flip it now when i trace it we'll be able to cut out that knot [Music] so for the legs and the stringers they really should be a thicker material unfortunately the store only had like three-quarter inch material so i'm going to glue up all the structural pieces like the legs the stringers so those end up being closer to like an inch and a half they'll just be a little sturdier i would recommend going with an inch and a half material and saving yourself this step but at least for the demonstrative purposes and for a chair that's gonna probably end up at my house i'm fine with doing a laminated glue up like this there will also be screws through all of it so i'm not too terribly concerned about any of it just so you know why i'm doing this now you know so i did trace these out and i did start to cut them out in hindsight i probably should have just glued them up rectangular have been way easier than traced them and cut them but i'm still leaving everything big and rough for this glue up stage and then i will come back and cut them all to the exact shape after it's a way cleaner layout [Music] [Applause] so we had to wait overnight we are back now to routing out the templates great little trick to use when you're doing the templates is what we call the blue tape trick so you just take some regular old painters tape you have the piece that we rough cut out yesterday to our template get those kind of lined up so the way they're going to go open them up like a sandwich put a little bit of tape along the pieces and you want to try to match the tape lay out from one side to the other and then you take the glue squiggle it on one side this is ca glue cyano accolade glue super glue with the activator spray this glue on one side the activator on the other then you're gonna as closely as you can line up to your pencil marks give it just a little press make sure that you're good as far as your covered the whole shape and now you have a template that's perfectly secured to it only thing that's actually holding it is the stickiness of the blue tape so it doesn't actually ruin your piece or the template so you can reuse it [Music] all the shapes are made they're a little bit rough on the back so i'm going to hit them with the sander real quick round over everything then we can finally assemble this mother sucker we have all the parts made now we screw to cherry hey real quick while sam's fabric cobble and his chair together i want to take a second to thank woodcraft for sponsoring this project woodcraft's been supporting us for years and they're absolutely bar none our favorite store for all things woodworking whether you're looking for tools materials or just some gidgets and good ads yeah woodcraft's got it all they've got a killer online store as well and they've got i think locations in 74 different cities across the country they're our favorites and we highly recommend it i got a link down in the description if you want to check out more from them and uh now i'm going to go check out whatever the hell sam's up to now so yeah thanks woodcraft [Music] so we have everything kind of at the right angles and geometry so now i'm going to put some screws through the side here to lock in the seat angle to the arm leg assembly that we put together put the back slats on a little bit of finish and we'll be drinking beers so we're really really close and i'm super happy with how this is [Music] i think it's time to test this thing [Music] actually really really nice i think it's a little narrow maybe it's just the armrests are too far in like it fits me fine but like john wouldn't probably be able to fit in this now it is time to spray our friends at total boat sent us this new finish that i haven't tried yet but it's like a durable uv protected outdoor let me grab the bag this is rugged clear gloss finish fast drying one hour you can spray it you can roll it you can brush it seems like a super awesome product and the perfect application for these outdoor chairs so i'm gonna use it so thank you to friends of total boat for hooking up with some cool finishes i got some in the gun already so you guys know the drill let us spray [Music] and i'm john and for the pro version we're going to be using multiple material species we're going to light this thing on fire to make it water resistant and it's going to rock literally we're going to make it rock let's go so before we cut any wood we need to make some templates for my chair so let's fire up miss piggy so before you get too squirrely you can purchase these we're going to be able to sell these to you if you want to make this chair specifically but in my experience i've probably done three dozen or so adirondack chairs in my day get yourself some templates to make things consistent and start from there now we don't have any rough cut lumber that we're going to be using for the base uh structure so we're going to be using a slab which means i have to hump this slab out of the storage and we'll lay things out on the back i'm going to try to like lay these out i'm best to use the grain of wood [Music] so what you just watched there is me getting everything milled down to thickness and now we're going to retrace all of our patterns this uh entire plan is built to work with one and a half inch materials for those ians that have that readily available so we just milled everything down to an inch and a half now it's time to retrace my templates and then we'll uh cut these out on the bandsaw and finish them up on the router table so when i was rough cutting kind of labeled everything as i was doing it that way i'm not guessing what part i needed but what i was doing it just makes it a little bit faster just becomes so many parts [Music] so now that everything's roughed out what we're going to do is attach our templates and trim them all to size on the router table i'm going to use the blue tape trick but you can use double-sided tape or you can make a jig for each individual one if you plan on making a bunch of chairs whatever floats your boat so we're going to get these all ready to rock and then head over to that beautiful little router table that we just built [Music] so things are coming together the parts are all cut so next thing to do is glue up but first i've got my spindle sander set to five degrees i have this plan to do so so we get the back lean that i want on the back slats thousand ways to skin a cat if you know a different way to do it on a curve that's not a band saw let me know because our band saw skills are not that good so i'm gonna see on this back to that five degrees like i said then we're gonna start with assembly [Music] next order of operations here is mounting the uprights to our legs we're going to do this with a domino but you can use a dowel you could even use a pocket hole if you wanted to hide those on the inside but i wanted to do a little bit of integral joinery to me it makes it a little bit more elegant hit that pro level just something that um you don't typically see in an adirondack chair because they're usually face screwed together because of their purpose now the other thing to keep in mind here is that we have a curve on the bottom here and it's a super subtle curve if you're going to do a joint like this cut everything while it's square and then you can come back and i can soften this bottom so we get a nice fit but as you as you can see right now we've got a little bit of a gap and that should be something i can barely barely touch up to get out of there i want to cut the dominoes square on square face this face is super close to square as well so it should work out i'll do a sloppy domino and then i'll use my lines here that i marked on the bottom that'll be in the plan if you want to do it to make sure everything's aligned when i clamp it up before i forget though got to cut the top angles here i'm gonna go ahead and glue everything up we're using a fast drying glue but we would recommend using a glue like titebond three that's for outdoor use we're using the flash drawing because we make videos i need this to dry quickly so i can continue to make this video for you guys guys and this will hold up fine like don't get me wrong like this glue is phenomenal you just want to use a little bit more of a water resistant outdoor glue if you can [Music] all right so while the pieces that are glued up are drying we're going to lay out our back slats now i've got a chunk of maple here because like i said i'm doing mine with two different tones of wood so the back slots are going to be maple like i said i'll lay them out on here rough cut them and then we'll just go through kind of the same process i could cut them on the cnc but the kerf on the cnc is not small it's about an eighth of an inch in minimum so there's a waste of a lot of wood and what we've got i just kind of wanted to go about this round and then this way yinz can try this too [Music] now i'm on to phase mock everything i have to make sure i like the spacing and the sizing got a bunch of parts that are rough so i'm gonna figure out if i can like prop them up so i can look at it because that's how i work i like to look at things it's weird use my eyes i could use a visible fastener here i'm going to use these two and a quarter inch uh stainless to mount the seat slats in the back a little tiny little head my concern on the seat stuff it's not quite strong enough so i'm going to use an integral joint again i'm going to use a domino so i'm going to cut these and get this thing glued up and then i should be able to start kind of mocking the chair together to see what it's going to look like which is exciting because building things and then looking at them is exciting i promise [Music] so i'm going to pre-finish all my parts and the next thing that's on the docket is i'm going to chamfer the back slacks in the top of the seat slots and then get those in the finish so i can work on assembling the base back to the router table so we are dry which means it's time for more mocking let's see what this thing looks like i made this thing a little bit bigger because i wanted it to fit me and it's screwing up my proportion slightly so the only thing i think we can do at this point is sit in it kind of see how it feels so i'm going to clamp the crap out of it and then that's what we're going to do let's let's see how she'd be feel it's a rocking chair i think the seat's too high i also i agree i'm super chubby and we're gonna use probably four fasteners per leg from the inside because we can hide them if you're not comfortable with using fasteners you can always use a carriage bolt which is kind of what the traditional way a lot of adirondack chairs or chairs of this style are made but for speed sake the screws are going to go a little faster for us let me get this thing together and then i'm going to show you a cool way to finish it [Music] this one right here we'll burn it in here what happens if we burn it down i don't think we're gonna get to that stage and for my next trick yes i belched we're gonna shashiki bond this bastard because why the hell not i don't like the look of red oak so i like to light it on fire also it's supposed to have some benefits when it comes to uh waterproofing i think in its traditional sense if you guys know the answer there let me know so let's get a char on here and then we'll clear it this is too small [Music] she's cooled off now which means it's time for finish let us spray [Music] we're using this halcyon clear varnish from total boat that you can actually spray again in an hour so it's already dry it's time for round two let's go now that we've got all the finish on the last thing left to do is attach all the parts and i'm gonna do this like an adult and pre-drill because we are sophisticated here pinkies up let's go all right so i'm gonna put back slats on first and i adjusted for my seat slightly off of the plan just because i had a little bit wider material than i anticipated using so we've only got eight slots i think the plan calls for like 10 or 12. but you can make adjustments there as you like because i have a little stand as you can see and i've marked where i want to mount my first two braces for the back and so this will have them all at equal height and then i'll be able to add and use spacers for the rest of them [Music] it works [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and that's going to be a wrap on this one if you guys dig these projects you want to build any yourselves we got plans for all of them we also got templates for these two uh that you can purchase and they'll be sent to you in a nice package so you can make something similar if you also want to see more three levels of other stuff i've got a whole playlist for you right here check it out

Channel: John Malecki

Views: 108,342

Rating: 4.9148221 out of 5

Keywords: John Malecki, John Malecki Builds, Woodworking, How To, outddoor projects, outdoor DIY Project, Summertime Project, 3 LEVELS, John Malecki 3 Levels, Adirondack Chair, DIY Adirondack Chair, Beginner Adirondack chair, Intermediaate adirondack chair, pro adirondack chair, adirondack rocking chair, outdoor rocking chair, DIY rocking chair, DIY Adirondack, outdoor furniture, DIY Outdoor Furniture

Id: kmt-oVAB6hU

Length: 21min 10sec (1270 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021