My Dad made a set of New Yankee Workshop Adirondack chairs in 1997 as a house warming present when I bought my first house. These chairs are simply wonderful. Eloquent and classic but most of all extremely comfortable. My Dad was an excellent woodworker. I will probably never be anywhere in his class but I am just in the beginning of my new hobby and still have a lot to learn. While I did help him on occasion and was semi interested, I never had the ambition to really learn the craft. You know young and dumb.. I should have learned from him when I could. But such is life...You live, you learn or hopefully learn from your mistakes. I still have both of those chairs some 23 years later. I've done repairs on both over the years. This chair was in particularly bad shape last fall. I started working on this after I made my "Tiny Horse Coral" (Garbage Can Holder) but we started the process of buying and moving in to a new house which was completed in the middle of February this year .Another lesson learned, Never Move In February, even in South Carolina. Well now as we've finally settled in and I have produced a few functional items for the house and yard, it was time to finish what I started. It's not a perfect restoration, as I did not have access to the original plans. The arm was fairly easy because the bad one was mostly intact. The Ryobi Jigsaw did a quick and easy job on this. The back brace was a bit more tricky. Since the one I took off was in pieces. I pretty much freehanded my replacement piece, also with the Jigsaw. Just guessing the angle. I later found on the internet that it was a 30 degree cut and made a couple more back braces but I ended up using my original freehand attempt. It's not perfect but overall i'm pleased to have many more years use out of this chair..
My Dad made a set of New Yankee Workshop Adirondack chairs in 1997 as a house warming present when I bought my first house. These chairs are simply wonderful. Eloquent and classic but most of all extremely comfortable. My Dad was an excellent woodworker. I will probably never be anywhere in his class but I am just in the beginning of my new hobby and still have a lot to learn. While I did help him on occasion and was semi interested, I never had the ambition to really learn the craft. You know young and dumb.. I should have learned from him when I could. But such is life...You live, you learn or hopefully learn from your mistakes. I still have both of those chairs some 23 years later. I've done repairs on both over the years. This chair was in particularly bad shape last fall. I started working on this after I made my "Tiny Horse Coral" (Garbage Can Holder) but we started the process of buying and moving in to a new house which was completed in the middle of February this year .Another lesson learned, Never Move In February, even in South Carolina. Well now as we've finally settled in and I have produced a few functional items for the house and yard, it was time to finish what I started. It's not a perfect restoration, as I did not have access to the original plans. The arm was fairly easy because the bad one was mostly intact. The Ryobi Jigsaw did a quick and easy job on this. The back brace was a bit more tricky. Since the one I took off was in pieces. I pretty much freehanded my replacement piece, also with the Jigsaw. Just guessing the angle. I later found on the internet that it was a 30 degree cut and made a couple more back braces but I ended up using my original freehand attempt. It's not perfect but overall i'm pleased to have many more years use out of this chair..
