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by Dave Heinzel, February 6, 2019

Building a tiny chair

In the midst of building a tiny room for a photo shoot, it became apparent that I needed an anchor piece of furniture. After a good deal of internet research, procrastination and then more internet research, I found myself making a one-third scale mid-century modern chair.

I chose this particular chair for a few reasons. One, I thought I could make it. Two, unlike some bulky upholstered chairs, you can see through this one in places, and I thought that might create some interesting shadows. Finally, it's just a cool chair.

I collected lots of photos online of similar chairs and designed my own blueprints. I reduced all the measurements by a third and printed templates. It would have been great to use walnut or cherry, but I ended up just grabbing some red oak from Lowes. Total cost for materials was about twenty bucks.

Anyway, I'll tell the rest of the story via photos. Long story short, I built a tiny chair.

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The raw lumber. My wood-shaping tools include a table saw, router and jigsaw.
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I used a table saw for most of the big cuts, building jigs like this one to cut angles (and hopefully not fingers).
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I used a jigsaw for other cuts like this, which sanded down to fairly nice curves.
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All of the main pieces cut and labelled.
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I can't overstate how important it was to get every angle just right. I was only using glue to connect the pieces, and unless each joint is perfectly flush, it fails. Fortunately careful math and precision paid off.
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Here's the first side, all glued up. I left some excess wood around the joints thinking they'd clean up better if I treated them as a single piece of wood. Not sure this was the best route, but it kind of worked.
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The back of the chair has vertical pieces that are round and flare out in the middle. I started with a jigsaw for the raw cuts then sanded down by hand.
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The finished pieces. I kept the best seven and discarded the bad one. There's always a bad one.
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Interesting tidbit: it's hard to drill a perfectly-positioned hole with a handheld power drill. On the left is my first attempt. I re-cut a piece of wood and created a complicated jig to hold the drill to the wood and made the piece on the right, which is good enough.
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Here's the back of the chair all glued up. Everything fit so well I think the glue wasn't even necessary.
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The whole chair is put together for a loose fitting. Everything looks good.
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The final gluing. I didn't want to use clamps and risk over-tightening something or messing up the alignment, so I just carefully stacked some things on the chair as the glue dried.
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It was such a joy to set the chair on its legs for the first time and see that all four legs touched.
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The cushions were tough, and I might remake them some rainy day. I built a foam core box, wrapped it in paper to smooth out the edges, then glued on pieces of an old t-shirt to add some padding. Then I carefully wrapped the final piece of fabric and glued it on the bottom. It's not great. The upper cushion is worse, as I didn't smooth out the corners enough.
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I stained the chair and finished with a semi-gloss clear coat. In hindsight, I should have given it a darker stain to hide the grain, since the grain is not to scale. But it's not bad.
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So that's my tiny chair. I'm making a tiny matching end table to go with it, but it's not done yet. I think I'm going to make a tiny desk lamp, too. Then maybe a tiny couch. And a tiny cat.

Comments

Looking great, Dave! Can't wait to see the photo shoot.

Arlin
Feb 6, 2019, 12:44 P.M.

Very impressive. Your many talents are amazing,

George
Feb 6, 2019, 1:53 P.M.

Amazing! Great job

Lisa
Feb 6, 2019, 1:54 P.M.

Looks great!

Karen Holmes Hagen
Feb 6, 2019, 2:46 P.M.

As always fantastic work. Your accomplishments always amaze me. Such talent and patience. Admirable!

Camellia
Feb 6, 2019, 3:28 P.M.

So unique! I enjoy how you document everything.

Peg
Feb 6, 2019, 4:35 P.M.

Very talented, love the chair! But I can't wait for the tiny cat...

Janet Allison
Feb 6, 2019, 10:50 P.M.

I never cease to be amazed

M
Feb 13, 2019, 9:19 P.M.