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Beach chair
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Made of lightweight cedar, these beach chairs fold for easy transport
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By Rick Campbell, photos by Roger Yip, illustration by Len Churchill
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Trace your pieces onto cedar from your template. Be as space-efficient as possible. Cut out each of the pieces with a bandsaw.
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Cut the Slats
Turn your attention to the slats for the seat and backrest. Begin by cutting out blanks for these parts from 3/4" cedar. It's a good idea to prepare a few extra slats to use as test pieces, or just in case you blow an important cut later. Leave the blank for the wider curved slat at the top of the backrest square for now.
The ends of the slats are notched to fit over the edge of the supports. I made these 1/8"-deep x 3/4"-wide rabbets using my mitre gauge to guide the parts over a dado blade installed in my tablesaw. A sacrificial board clamped to the fence and positioned flush against one side of the blade serves as a positive stop to determine rabbet widths. Use the spare blanks, prepared earlier, to fine-tune this setup before you go to town on the parts destined for the project.
With the rabbets done, complete the curved profile on the top seat slat. To create the arc, trace along the edge of a flexed strip of wood, then cut out the profile with a bandsaw or scrollsaw. Sand to remove any tool marks before rounding over the edges on the top face of all of the slats using a bearing-guided 1/4"-rad. bit in a table-mounted router.
Put it All Together
Using the arrangement of brass bolts, washers and cap nuts shown in the plans, attach the seat supports to the backrests. Now you're ready to install the slats using weatherproof glue and one inch stainless-steel #8 pan-head screws. The approximate spacing for the slats is shown in the plans. Just be sure your arrangement allows the end of the seat to clear the bottom backrest slat when the chair is folded. Predrill for screws, countersinking the heads 3/8" deep to accommodate tapered wooden plugs. I cut my own plugs from scrap using a drillpress cutter. Before you move on to the next step, take a minute to sand the tips of the backrest supports to conform to the curved profile on the top slat.
The cross braces are located on the front and rear sides of the backrest assembly. They will support the seat when someone is relaxing on it. Notice that the plans show one edge of each brace is bevelled 20º to approximate the slope of the seat supports. With the chair unfolded, and the bottom of the legs sitting flat on your bench, hold the braces in place and mark their position. This is much easier to accomplish with an extra pair of hands, so don't be a lone hero. Now, fold the chair and install the braces at the marked locations using glue, screws and tapered wooden plugs, as before. Make sure the bevelled edges are oriented in the proper direction.
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