Meet Maureen. She is a young lady who took woodworking in high school and wants to get her hands back in sawdust. I thought making the Adirondack chair would be a good project for both of us.       I search the Internet for plans and found quite an assortment. One free plan caught my attention and I downloaded it. It is called the Jake's Chair for the person who invented it. Jake was a large person and built the chair a little larger than the typical Adirondack chair. At the end, we will list how to get these free plans. The plans are courtesy of Tom Gauldin of Raleigh, North Carolina, a friend of Jake's. This is one of the  pictures that is a part of the zip-file.     The packet you print out from the zipped file is 38 pages long with about 21 of those pages are text instructions, 4 pages of annotated photos and the rest measured drawings. As I said, the Jake's chair is a complex task, but one that we can handle if we follow the steps carefully. We will try to illustrate each of the steps so that you can build your own Jake's chair(s). If you haven't used measured drawings before, this report may help you. These measured drawings pack a lot of information into each page.     The first step is to lay each plan out and convert it to full scale...at least for any part that will require some curved sawing and router work. We have put a full plywood panel on two horses to help this layout process.    We will be cutting a template of 1/4" tempered hardboard for each curved part. With the templates, making copies of the chair will go very quickly and accurately.  Here Maureen is organizing the plan package and  preparing to transfer the first plan to full scale paper. She uses ordinary shelf paper that has an adhesive back and is also printed with 1" squares.     We have all heard "Measure Twice, Cut Once." This is definitely the time to double check. We will be making a test chair, but we still want to get it right the first time—if we can.     Maureen has cut the shape from the shelf paper and positions it on a piece of the tempered hardboard. Main Menu Next  Page