It gets even better with wood carving (rather than building out of straight planks):
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/seating/chairs/african-sol...
I've done ten's of carving by gluing thin layers in a mold to create carved plywood. Those are extra strong but required to use quite a lot of glue and get the right thickness wood veneers. Would love to learn the solid board way.
edit: fined tuned my English today: seems carving means sculpting and not bending.
The english term for what you are referring to in bent lamination which is done by taking a piece of wood, slicing it to sections with a thin kerf blade, soaking in water, and then clamping to a form and gluing back together. This is how Russ Filbeck creates his classic presidential rocker.
[1] https://engineeringlearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Adze...
I feel like people have just gotten so used to 10-second videos, and anything longer now feels like an eternity.
I really hope people don’t stop making longer form videos in favor of TikTok-sized videos.
I guess I didn’t immediately get that impression when I watched it, but I wasn’t watching it with that in mind.
My point is I don’t mind filler in videos, if it’s true to what’s naturally happening.
But intentionally adding filler is, indeed, poor form.
https://i.imgur.com/XO6cUo5.png
Edit: Wait... Does everybody see this? It's not on all videos, but it's on most for me, but my girlfriend says she never noticed it. I can't find any articles claiming it was ever fully rolled out, so maybe it's a premium feature? Here's the vid if anybody wants to check:
Great video btw, two musicians with great communication and flow
Shorts are absolutely terrible as product reviews. The point of a product review is to explore different aspects and use cases, otherwise it is an ad. It doesn't mean that long videos can't be ads, but short videos can't be anything but ads (if positive).
Shorts have a place, TikTok is great for silly dance moves, magic tricks, or people working really fast. You can even have short form educative content, though it usually doesn't go further than random trivia. But product reviews just don't work, unless they are ads. And in fact, ads don't even work that well as people tend to forget about them quickly.
https://rovagear.com/products/rova-chair
(Not an endorsement. Just if you’re curious.)
Embers from a fire won’t burn the surface (If removed quickly).
I think that is true for many surface materials, and that "quickly" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It also completely fails to communicate whether or not a carbon fiber chair is "safe enough" around an open fire. Annoying.
The Helinox Chair Zero is the standard by which all backpacking chairs are compared https://helinox.com/products/chair-zero - and it is 1 lb 1 oz.
And then some people mod these chairs, like this similar one that was reduced to 13 oz. https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/chair-enlightening...
It's so light it adds basically nothing to your carry weight. It takes seconds to put together. It's insanely comfortable. Kicking back in it after a long day's hike or canoe whilst prodding at the camp fire is such a joy.
I put it alongside my thermarest as a thing I never felt I'd ever buy and now use on every trip.
I always thought it was all about travel as light as possible
But I think it's more about travel with as many things as possible - the lightness of the objects is just an emergent requirement in order to not break your back.
I've done my fair share of hiking, longest being a 90km 5-day hike in the Namibian desert, with no facilities save for a river. Weight was a big factor, because you needed to pack food for at least 8 days to be safe and there is nowhere to get food once you start the hike. What equipment you pack and the weight of said equipment weight had to be kept at a minimum.
Having said that...
A chair or other seating arrangement was by a large margin the lowest priority item on my list. There is one giant chair under our feet the whole time: the ground. And if that is not suitable, finding a stump or a rock or whatever to sit on is really not that hard and it's infinitely more environmentally friendly.
Glass half full: If I cut 14 oz of weight out of this pack by removing zipper pulls, straps, cords, carrying cases, and switch everything to 10x cost titanium, the chair is practically free.
The ultralight community doesn't typically touch this stuff. This is sold to traditional backpackers that are drawn to the allure of ultralight.
I've been a web dev for 8 years but my heart is in woodworking for the next many years :)
https://syllabus.pirate.care/library/Enzo%20Mari/Autoprogett...
I never understood those tbh, used pallets are splintery. I wouldn't be surprised if you can buy pallets specifically made for use in upcycle projects.
fake edit after a quick search: yup, you can buy readymade pallet benches or benches "inspired by" pallet projects.
https://www.online-pallets.nl/products/pallet-bank-2-hoog-me...
https://www.karwei.nl/assortiment/wakefield-palletbank-lina-...
Or this is why they told us we wouldn't get white desks in Seattle when we had em in sfo. Even though we got the same legs.
Built a few desks. Got a door desk award (not for my sub par carpentry).
thanks, i hate it ("it" being the recuperation of DIY)
For those of you who start from really zero and have no idea how to start, here is a step-by-step for a couple of pieces: https://lieu-subjectif.com/documents/caue-22-rietveld-mari.p...
If really you want a "cheat sheet", there's whole book to help: https://filmandfurniture.com/product/hammer-nail-making-and-...
But try not to use it too much, because it really defeats the purpose of Mari, which it is to get people to "think with their hands".
Digging through the legacy and follow-ups of Autoprogettazione is also interesting:
https://lieu-subjectif.com/documents/autoprogettazione-revis...
https://greg.org/archive/mari-x-ikea.pdf
The "Harz IV" (Germany's working poors) furniture project: https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/lablog/hartz-iv-mobel-it...
Simple Japanese Furniture by Monomono / KAK Design Group: https://woodworkersinstitute.com/simple-japanese-furniture-c...
https://www.core77.com/posts/42562/Nomadic-Furniture-DIY-Des...
And and and last but not least, the great Christopher Schwarz and team at Last Art Press just got out a whole video serie and book on how to make a highly respectable chair design from very basic materials and tools:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pWLHAJr5zI
Note also that Lost Art Press makes their books free after some time after first publication, and have a very interesting blog:
https://blog.lostartpress.com/2024/12/27/download-ingenious-...
Two of the core ideas are that the majority of the work can be undertaken by a single person with basic carpentry skills, using readily-available materials in standard sizes so there is minimal cutting and waste.
I've been thinking about doing this, and my main thought is that the insulation standards were probably effectively non-existent at the time, beyond "as few draughts as possible"!
Edit: not sure if these will be geo-blocked, but there are a couple of programmes about that project here:
Build: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/on-demand/...
Revisit 10+ years later: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/on-demand/...
The chair in the blog benefits from essentially having all load bearing done by the wood, any screws or nails would be superficial only. We have several good hard wood chairs here with dove tail joints and spring based cushions - and they are excellent.
Nah, I've seen a bunch of these over the years, they basically last forever.
This is not an ""argument from authority" but "Chesterton's Fence".
One thing to observe is that people were lighter traditionally (i.e. prior to 1974 when this was published), and the load bearing capacity of a chair was less important than it is today. Also bare in mind that wood has become far more expensive, and people of today would likely be using less dense wood.
On page 52 for example, each leg (E) is nailed/screwed into C by just three points. The C wood itself is in a strong configuration, but the legs are almost an afterthought. Without any lower support (e.g. as shown on page 56), the nails/screws will eventually be levered out. The actual loading on the leg itself is not great, with three nails/screws seemingly aligned with the grain. The result would be a split that runs along the grain, and that may have been what happened to the left leg in the picture.
"Autoprogettazione" is not a DIY book, or a guide, or a procedure. It is a project to gift common people the insight of what goes into making an object. The result Enzo seeks is not that you end up with another object/furniture in your house, but that you end up with a new appreciation of what makes an object stand up in 3D and, for example, support your weight, or flatter your eye.
If you want to follow step-by-step orders, there was and there is already hundreds of books, and thousands of workers do the same in factories - just executing orders.
And nothing stops you to paint them or engrave them.
Is a wooden box "brutalist" too? It is a box. It is square. Is the the same as a square windowless concrete building?
Insofar as brutalism is about showcasing the raw building materials, yes, I think this is precisely what brutalism is about. Brutalism often uses concrete, but the big idea is to showcase the underlying material. (And if wood is more beautiful than concrete, great!)
The warnings persist in part because older wood still has that problem, so "reclaimed wood" projects can be risky. That said, since mid-2000s, wood in the US and the EU is treated primarily with much safer copper compounds. Copper isn't hugely toxic to humans at the levels you're likely to be exposed to from wood.
To be fair, the treatment often also includes an organic fungicide (the "azole" part in "copper azole"), which is probably not understood as well as copper.
Wood is typically treated with nasty chemicals. For example, formaldehyde is extensively used in these applications, and it's linked with cancer.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/form...
I was of the impression that PT lumber to modern standards involved relatively innocuous copper plus an organic biocide like an azole (for antifungal purposes), no?
And I thought the formaldehyde-heavy resins were regulated into obscurity back in like 2009, were they not?
Modern copper-based treatments--e.g. ACQ or CA--still cause skin and eye irritation. If you try to sand it so that people sitting in your new chair don't get a nasty splinter somewhere best avoided, you can compromise the effectiveness of the treatment (even when the treatment gets full penetration, it's still most effective on the outer layers you're now sanding away). Plus, while the dust you create when working with it might not include arsenic, it's still nasty to breathe in and can cause respiratory problems. Staining P/T wood can be a whole ordeal in itself, and because interact much more closely with furniture than say a deck, any imperfections will be more noticeable.
Even then, it's not like P/T furniture isn't going to require ongoing maintenance in the future. At which point, you're better off with something like cedar or white oak. Hell, with a decent outdoor grade finish and proper care, even untreated pine is going to last for years without rotting away underneath you.
Still trouble when the chair is at end of life, and you burn or bury it.
Here’s what I use for furniture that I build:
- My planters use red cedar, often bare.
- My outdoor furniture use a wood oil plus polyutherane.
- My indoor furniture use just wood oil.
But that’s only in general. There are other considerations like impact resistance and spills that can stain the wood so you have to decide what combination of wood type and treatments work for your goal.
[1] https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Burn-Stain-Wood-Aka-Sho...
You can also add a sealant on top like polyutherane if you want it to last even longer at the cost of imparting a different texture.
Oh. Just realized I have a lot of unsealed end cuts on my latest projet
But a few weeks ago, I visited a local woodworker and ordered one of these chairs. I had to let go of all my previous prejudices - this type of chair is surprisingly comfortable and stable. And it's even useful for certain "other" activities :-D
They’re talking about the chair being useful during sex.
Crazy to see them warrant a posting here, I had assumed most people had seen them before.
Link for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/@GrandpaAmu
If anyone is interested in chairmaking, I can recommend the book "The Use of Weapons", by Iain M. Banks. (/s)
Every now and then the issues of IT projects make me say "screw it all, I'm going to be a lumberjack". And then I go work the chainsaw for a weekend, and come back thankful for the office chair in a climate controlled room.
Working with your hands is great meditation in small doses, but brutal when you need to do it enough to make a living.
It starts out not much more complicated than this and builds to a surprising array of furniture projects with a very small number of techniques. Although the actual materials are a bit annoying: it leans heavily on cut nails and specifically not the more easy to buy wire nails you usually see in DIY shops.
But also, the book is a physically gorgeous artefact in its own right. The illustrations are delicious.
I have a lot of lumber from previous construction projects, and all the basic woodworking tools. I also have some relevant skills. Would I be able to build it right now? No, need a wide and sturdy board, widest I have is 150x30mm pinewood. Would I make one if I had a proper piece of wood? Also no, I just don't want to accept the structural weakness here. And this joint actually requires some precision, which is not trivial (at least for me) with handheld circular saw!
Haven't built a chair yet, but my go-to design would be something like Adirondack.
1 - https://hungarianworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/EZ-...
https://lostartpress.com/products/make-a-chair-from-a-tree
In the book she starts with the basics and works up to assembly including woven seats. These are beautiful lightweight chairs. Even if you don't build the chair, it's a great lesson in wooworking.
I hadn't seen their "Build a Chair from Bullshit" book before. I've always been a little intimidated at the thought of building a chair, but this one looks like it's easy to build and has nice lines. Definitely more involved than the OP's chair, but it still looks still approachable with basic tools and skills.
https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/BAC...
Edit: As mentioned in dlbucci's comment below, I forgot to mention that it's available for free as a downloadable PDF book as well as for purchase as high quality bound book on their site. If you have any interest in an easy to build chair with an attractive design, it's worth a look.
Also there is the "Anarchist" wood working books that are also excellent and free on the same site.
https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/Woodworking-for-...
wonger_•6mo ago
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