DIY Adirondack Chair Template Plans

You just can't beat the comfort of a well-made Adirondack chair, and here's a warning for you with this project. You make a couple of these for yourself, you better be prepared to make a couple for everybody who sees 'em, 'cause they're gonna love 'em. This chair is gonna be easy for you to make using the patterns that we've provided on the PDF on this DVD. It's made from readily available cedar decking material. I love that stuff for this chair 'cause it's nice and thick, makes the chair very, very strong, and readily available. You can walk into just about any home center and buy this material right off the shelf. Now, comfort comes from compound curves that are built into this chair. I really, really like this feature. The back has got a curve in it. Not every Adirondack chair does, but your back does. So, having that curve built into this chair makes it very, very comfortable for you to lean back in it. Now, the other part of you that's got a curve in it is your seat. So to make this chair nice and comfortable, its seat has also got a curve. That's where we get the compound part of this. We're curved down here, curved across the back. You can really sink way back into this chair. Using the patterns that we've provided for you, you're gonna find it pretty straightforward to make even the complex curved parts that are required for this chair. So, I'm ready, if you are, to get started on making the parts so that we can get a couple of these chairs in your backyard. In order to get started on cutting parts for the Adirondack chair, first, you have to deal with your paper patterns. I really wanna end up with not just paper patterns but nice hardboard patterns like these. So here's the deal. Once you've got your paper patterns, cut 'em out so that you've cut outside of the template line itself. I wanna have some space left here. Now, what you'll do is fasten the paper to your hardboard. Hardboard works great for the patterns for this project. The easiest way to fasten these two together is with spray adhesive. You can get spray adhesive at craft stores and home centers, and it's in an aerosol. So when I spray that glue down, I'll be able to very easily stick the paper pattern right on top of it. After that glue has a chance to dry, using a band saw or a jigsaw, cut outside the line, and then carefully sand the template back to the line. Remember that any little whoops or bobbles that you leave in that line are gonna show up. They're gonna telegraph into your project. So you really, really, really wanna take the time to be very careful producing the templates. Once you have a good set of templates, it's easier to make a good set of parts. So go through that process, get all the patterns made, then we can apply the patterns to the actual project pieces themselves. Cedar is a wonderful material for making outdoor projects out of, naturally water-resistant, looks really, really great outside. That's the material of choice here for my Adirondack chair. What I'm actually using is cedar decking. It's called 5/4 by six decking. What you're really getting is material that's about an inch thick, 5 1/2 inches wide. The corners have been rounded 'cause the manufacturer doesn't want you to get splinters in your toes when you're walking on the deck. That's a helpful feature for us because, to avoid splinters, we also have most of the parts rounded on their corners in the Adirondack chair. Looking at the cutting list for this project, you will find some pieces where it indicates that they need all four corners square. If that's the case, you'll have to take this material to the table saw and rip these rounded edges off so that they're not present anymore for the project. You'll find that this decking comes in a variety of lengths, eight-footers, 10s, 12s, 16s. What you wanna do is rough cut these parts initially so they're about an inch longer than what you need for the project. That's gonna make it manageable so that you can have it easy to work with in your shop. Once we've got 'em rough cut to size, now we're ready to finally start making chips, get our patterns on here, and start cutting parts that we specifically need for the Adirondack chair. When it comes to cutting out the curved parts for your chair, just a couple things to keep in mind. First is, tool selection for cutting those parts out. I'll be doing all my cutting on the band saw, which I think is the easiest way to make this happen. If you don't have a band saw, you can use a handheld jigsaw, but one thing that band saw offers us is the ability to cut thick parts. It isn't so much that the parts individually are thick, but we have a huge advantage with the band saw. That is that we can gang pieces together. We can put 'em in a pad. Remember that, in many cases on your chair, we'll want two mirror image pieces. The arms are a great example. The angled legs are an example. The slats for the back are an example. So whenever possible, cut those parts together. Now, a lot of times, when I'm gonna pad things together on the band saw, I'll use double-faced tape in order to hold 'em together. In the case of this cedar, I find that sometimes, the surfaces are just a little bit irregular, and as a result, the double-faced tape doesn't grab as well as it should. So, for this stuff, I'm gonna use hot glue and I find that, because the hot glue is fairly thick, it'll take up small differences in those surfaces and make this work much, much better. It doesn't take much. Notice those gobs I put on there were pretty tiny. In the time it takes that glue to cool down, these parts are ready to go. They're firmly held together. Now, a couple things about cutting. Remember that, as always with band saw work, you wanna stay to the outside of the pencil line. When you're done, you should be able to see the pencil line plus a little bit of waste. That applies to all the lines that we're gonna cut on here. Keep these parts in a pad throughout the sanding process. That way, you know that when they're done, maybe you missed your template shape just a little bit, but you'll miss it the same with both pieces. So no matter what, in this case, both arms, have to be perfectly identical. This cutting is pretty straightforward. As I said, stay outside of the line. Leave yourself some sanding room. There's a couple other cuts on this project that are a little bit trickier. Let me show you those next. The lower rear cross-piece provides a unique setup here. I'm talking about this part down here at the bottom of the chair. And what's actually gonna happen here is that, with a single cut, we're gonna get two pieces. With one cut, we get the lower rear cross-piece here. We also get the first of the seat slats. Here's what it looks like on the material. When we lay that pattern onto our 5 1/2-inch wide piece, we get a seat slat and the lower rear cross-piece. So it's a little bit unique when you cut in that we don't actually have a waste side of the line. We want both pieces. So this is a single opportunity here where we need to cut right on the pencil line, not to one side or the other. As you sand these pieces, be very conservative with your sanding. We wanna make sure that when we assemble a chair, they still nest back together. But we do wanna get these marks off of here to make sure that we get, especially on this piece, good glue adhesion against this face. So just a little bit of sanding will be all that takes. This is an application where we've got that roundover left here on the front. That's what came from the factory on this piece. But using a router, you'll need to match that roundover here on the back. So there are some pieces in this project where you're gonna have to do your own routing in order to make sure you have that roundover. Now that's one unique cutting opportunity. There's another one I wanna show you too. That is the upper rear cross-piece. So what I'm talking about there is the template that looks like this. This is this piece up here on the top of the slats. The upper rear cross-piece has to be cut at 27 1/2 degrees in order to match the angle of these slats. So, once your template has been laid on here, you can cut the end using a miter saw or a circular saw. That's easy. This is the part of the cut that we need to do at 27 1/2 degrees. Here's a dirt simple way to get your saw perfectly set. What I did is I took a piece of scrap to the miter saw and I cut this end at 27 1/2. And this is how I'm gonna set the angle on my band saw. Gotta unplug the saw first. I need to see more blade so I can fit my shape on there. So I'll loosen up the table and pivot the table until my 27 1/2-degree cut is in perfect alignment with the band saw blade. Doing this on a jigsaw, you can do it the same way. Use it to set the foot on the jigsaw so that you know this angle is just right. So the slats make good contact with it. Now I wanna bring my upper guide back down so it's in a safe position. Here's a very important part of making this cut. The part that you're keeping when I'm doing this on the band saw has to be on the uphill side of the blade. If we cut it the other way, if we cut it in this direction, this part, the upper rear cross-piece, is gonna end up too small. So make sure that you end up with the short part of the angle on the top of that board just the way I'm gonna cut right here. For this cut, I did stay outside my pencil line, leaving waste there, 'cause I don't need this piece. This is scrap. I just need this piece. Little bit of waste. I can sand back to my pencil line. This is what I mean about the short part of the angle is on top. The long part of the angle down here in order to get this dimensionally correct. So, once you've got this cut made, you can go ahead and sand this, take those marks off, so that we've got that cleaned up and once again we have good adhesion for the back slats against this piece. Now it's time in this project for the S-word. All these parts gotta be sanded so they're ready to get together. A couple ways you can go about this. One way is, right here at the bench. Now if you have a vise, you can put your piece in a vise, hold it so that you can work on these edges. If you don't have a vise, let me show you how you can do this with a hand screw clamp. This is just a pretty handy trick to know. One thing that hand screw clamps suffer from is, people struggling, trying to get the jaws parallel as they clamp parts together. Here's a trick for that. What I wanna do is set the back jaw first. So I'm gonna turn this screw only. And I'm setting the distance from there to there to the thickness of my material. Then, I can rest my part in there, close the front jaw, tighten the back jaw. What that does is keeps the jaws nice and parallel all the way across their length. That provides the most rigid grab on this thing. So, position just like that. Now I can work on this edge. This is one of those angle cuts I did earlier. It doesn't take much at all to sand these band saw marks off. Be real careful on this piece that you're not messing up that angle that you so carefully cut here so that we make sure we have a good fit against those slats, like I've mentioned a couple times already. In addition to edge work, you also need to sand the faces of all these pieces. It is so much easier to do it now than when they're in the chair. Router pads like this are a great way to work on these faces because sitting on the pad, of course, that part's not gonna move on ya. So, get those parts laid out on a pad. Get all the surfaces sanded as well. Now, in addition to sanding, you gotta do some routing. So let's have a look at that. This piece is an example where, when we made this cut, we have a factory edge on one side, that nice roundover. We have a square edge on this side. And this is the first seat slat, so we wanna make sure that we get this rounded over. And the way to do that is to make sure that the router bit that you use has a radius that matches the radius that's already on this material. And I find that a 3/8-inch roundover bit works perfect for this. There are a couple ways that you can make this router work happen. One would be to put the router bit in a handheld router. With your work secured here on a router pad, do all the rounding over at the bench. You can certainly put that in a router table as well if you have one, do all the rounding over at the bench. Now, a couple notes about the rounding over that you do wanna pay attention to. The seat slats like this piece should only get rounded over on the top edge. Now, if you've got an existing factory edge on 'em, don't sweat it. That, of course, is already rounded on the bottom. That's okay. What I don't wanna do is round over the end out here and take away material that would otherwise be glued down to the angled leg. So, the arms, the vertical back slats, those are all gonna get rounded over on every edge they've got. On the seat slats, you're only gonna round over top edges. And you've got some parts that get no roundover at all. Just have a look at the cutting list and you'll be able to pick those outs. Now, with that router work done, what you'll wanna do is just use a finish sander or sandpaper in your hand. Work on those rounded over edges so that they're nice and smooth. Then we've got everything sanded, routed, about ready to get put together. Gotta get the assembly going in the right sequence here. Step one, lower rear cross-piece onto the angled legs. A couple things are real key here. I'm using an exterior glue. This glue is gonna hold up very, very, very well, even if I never bring this chair inside. I'm also using exterior screws. These are screws that are actually designed for decking. And they're gonna also hold up very well. Good rule of thumb for fasteners. You want 'em to be at least twice as long as what you're going through. So I'm putting this together with two-inch screws. Don't be tempted to take a shortcut here and skip the pre-drill, 'cause you will almost certainly split this cedar. That's all set. Now notice how that went together. This is where our chair is gonna live. So we've got this shallower angled cut up here on the front. Next thing we can do is get our vertical legs on this. Here's where I'm at on assembly. A couple things I've got done. I've got this front rail already installed. That's very simple. It's just screw and glue onto the front of the angled legs. Make sure that you stay nice and flush across the top so that they meet. That's where your seat slats are gonna end up. I've got one vertical leg on, ready to put the second one on. My bolt locations for the carriage bolts are already marked on the legs. One of the things I wanna do instead of letting this tip or trying to set it to a pencil line is just make a prop underneath it like this that's gonna hold it in just the right spot vertically so that the leg is oriented correctly. This is gonna go on with both carriage bolts and glue. Align with the front edge. And then the easiest way to keep it where you want it is to get a clamp on there until you get one bolt in. Then the clamp can come off. The chair really depends on this joint for its structure. You can imagine that as you sit on here, the last thing we'd ever want is for this to let go. So to backtrack a little bit, when these rails go on, make sure the end grain of the rail is perfectly flush with the face of this angled leg so that when we close this seam, the glue can really do its thing and hold those parts together. Plus, we add three carriage bolts with washers and nuts holding this thing together. Makes it very, very secure. Now I've got the brackets put on to both of these vertical legs. The brackets mount so that they're nice and even with the top of the leg and they're perfectly centered. Make sure you get those brackets nice and straight all the way down. Notice that on the brackets, I do wanna make sure that I do not have a rounded edge, a factory edge, against the leg. I wanna have an edge that I've cut square. Make sure that I get a good glue bond. Then that's screwed and glued from this side. Then you're ready for the arm. Now, here's the easiest way to get these arms on here. Got my screw locations already marked out on top of the arm. It's a 3/4-inch space this way, an inch and 1/8 space this way. Easiest way to make that happen is to make a little jig. So this is 3/4 of an inch in that direction, inch and 1/8 in that direction. Now, I can glue it and screw it. Gonna put this on so that the inside edge is even with that 3/4-inch face and the front corner here is even with that inch and 1/8 space. That takes care of getting the arms out. That simple spacer makes it much, much, much simpler than it would otherwise be. So those two arms are all set. I've got the chair flipped around and the upper rear cross-piece in here. Let me show you how I got there. The key is that you need a 20 1/2-inch spacer in between the arms. Now as you're working on this, remember that these arms are cantilevered a long way from those front legs, and if you get a lotta pressure on these, you're gonna bust something up on front. So, be very gentle with this. The upper rear cross-piece goes in so that it's angling up this way. This is that 27 1/2-degree cut that was made earlier. So it's angled like this. Got my 20 1/2-inch spacer in between. Then, what you need to do is split the difference on each side, meaning, I want the same overhang left and right. The distance from outside of arm to outside of arm is greater than the length of the cross-piece. So typically, I just feel that, make sure it's the same on each side. Make sure that the cross-piece is flush with the back. Once everything is correctly positioned, I'll get some clamps on there temporarily. This is another application where we want the strength of carriage bolts instead of just the outdoor deck fasteners. So, once I've got the clamps on there, all my alignment is set, then you can drill for four carriage bolts once again. Carriage bolt, washer, nut from the bottom, plus glue in between. So, think about this. We've got a lotta stress as you lean back on the chair. That's why we wanna make sure we've got a good strong joint there. Once that's secure, let me show you a setup that you need on the lower rear cross-piece leading up to the next step. When we put the slats on, we wanna make sure that they're positioned correctly. We actually get 'em on so that they create kind of a fan effect, sort of a sunburst. So the way to do it is measuring from the end of the lower rear cross-piece in, I'm gonna make a mark at 1 1/2 inches. When my first slat goes on, the edge of the slat will be there. The edge of the slat up here will lean right against the arm. That actually splays it out at an angle. Do the same thing on the other side. You'll have that set up already for the slats to get installed. Before the back slats go on and secure this dimension, we gotta make sure that dimension is right. Here's the check I want you to make. Measure from the bottom of the arm down to the floor at the front. Do the same measurement at the back. What we're shooting for is to make the arms perfectly parallel to the floor. If they're not, you can easily make an adjustment here. So let's say that when you measure at the back, that number is smaller. We have to jack the back of this up. Do that by using a piece of scrap in between the upper and lower cross-pieces. And I can easily raise that up to the position where I want it. If the number's already too big, then you don't wanna jack it up. We wanna squeeze it down. So we can squeeze it down by putting a clamp on here, make that adjustment until you have it right. In this case, as they sit here, they're okay. So we're ready to go. Ready to go means we can put the first of the slats on. The outside slats have to go on first. Remember we made a registration mark for those earlier. So the way it's gonna go is glue and screw. The key to getting our sunburst pattern is that the slat will touch the inside of the arm and then be on that registration, that pencil mark, on the bottom. And because we're angling it, it's not gonna completely be in contact with the bottom edge of this rail. So what I'm doing is the corner toward the outside is the corner that I'm making flush. Once we've got that in the right position, that can get drilled and then screwed. Once we get one screw in there, everything's gonna get a lot easier here. Now let me point something out that's really, really, really important. When you drill for these upper screws, you need to make sure that you're drilling the hole parallel to the floor, which makes it parallel to the upper cross-piece. It's natural that you wanna drill the hole perpendicular to the face of the slat. If you do that, your screw is almost certainly gonna come out the bottom of it. So you need to hold your drill down at an angle parallel to the floor like this so that you're punching through that slat this way. That's gonna run you dead on into that cross-piece to make sure you don't blow out top or bottom. The right slat's gonna go in exactly the same way the left slat did, beginning our sunburst pattern on the back. I've got the slat on the right in place. It splays out against that arm just the other one did. Then, the center slat, you simply center that between the first two to make sure you've got uniform spacing on each side. Then, all we need to do is get our final slats in. These are gonna go in centered between the other two. So, this one, I usually take the time to very carefully measure that position. This one, I find that, once I've got some glue on there, I can position that by eye, get it in just the right spot. So now I'll get those two slats on. Here's the way to get your seat slats down so they're really gonna look nice. First, put down the inner slat. Remember that nests right against our vertical slats back here because it came right from that lower cross-piece. So those should fit together real well. Then, get your slat out here on the outer edge. That projects past the vertical leg by 1/4 inch. Now what we wanna do is maintain uniform spacing on the rest of the seat slats. So I'm gonna start this by just getting all the slats installed. That leaves me a huge gap up here. What I wanna do is measure that distance. Whatever number that is, divide it by the number of gaps you have, in this case, two, three, four, five. So I'm gonna take this measurement, divide it by five. That's gonna lead me to making spacers like this. Once I know what that number is, then I can insert the spacer on each side, glue and screw my slats, working this all the way up. That'll give me perfectly uniform spacing on those seat slats so it looks real nice. Get those all secured to the chair. You're just about done with this project. Well, here's your reward. Let's test this baby out. Oh, that's a nice fit. Very, very comfortable, feels great. I'm actually gonna hate to see this leave the shop, give me a place to sneak in a nap or two if it was still in here. You can leave this cedar untreated and it's gonna be fine outside. Remember, we've got exterior glue, exterior screws. If you want the cedar to maintain this color, then you should seal it. There's all sorts of products on the market for that. Check it out at a paint store or home center, lots of different things you can apply to this. And it'll keep this lovely cedar look. That wraps up the cedar Adirondack chair. Hope you enjoyed it.