Sunday, August 17, 2008

Adirondack Chairs - Part 4 (final installment)

It was a busy weekend in the OP. I got the storms hung and also finished the Adirondack Chairs. It is sad. The process on the chairs has taken about a month to complete but I've only spent about 9 or 10 hours on the project. I guess this is average for all of the house projects and explains why things seem to take so long.
The chairs came out o.k. I give my craftsmanship about a C. One leg is a little off on one of the chairs and the spacing of the pickets is not quite even and I didn't line up all the screws either. The connections of the arms to the back rest is a little strange too. I'd give the overall project a B. The chairs are sturdy and they are comfortable and you don't even notice the crooked leg when they are sitting on the lawn. We'll see how they hold up.

I think the folks at Rockler can take a little fault for my "C" though. I always thought of myself more as a C+/B- when it came to carpentry. I really think the templates could be better and aligned to different sizes of wood. The fact that there is not a lot of tolerance for errors would be nice if it were noted as well. I also wouldn't recommend taking this on with a hand-held jig saw. Though it can be done, a band saw would probably be more accurate. Needless to cay, this C+/B- carpenter doesn't have one of those.


The DVD that came with the kit was good but obviously this guy was an expert and made things look way too easy. They really should have had a moron like myself putting these things together so that you can see all the crap that is confusing and can go wrong.


This said, If you are a slightly better than average carpenter, I'd recommend this project and the Rockler templates. I'm guessing that the chairs came to about 45 bucks each (which I think is pretty reasonable) and I always enjoy the puzzle of figuring out stuff like this. I am now going to design and build a side table and foot stools to go with these - hopefully they won't take a year to complete.

1 comment:

Jen said...

They look GREAT !