Finally Done - Danish Modern Inspired Upholstered Chair

[Ryan Eldridge]

Hi there all.

I have not posted many projects but wanted to post this one.

It is a danish modern inspired (at least to me) chair.

The wood is ash with steam bent arms, and finished with sheallac. I used my dowelmax jig for the joints. The cushions are framed with some spare alder I had. The back cushion is elastic webbing covered with foam over the wood frame, and the seat is zig-zag springs covered with foam over the wood frame.

If the chair looks really low, it is I am short and wanted a low lounge chair for my living room. It sits comfortably, the foam may be a little dense but I think that will settle in. It was my first real upholstery project came out ok, there are always those little things to improve on.

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[Paul Saffold]

Nice chair, Ryan. There's no such thing as "one size fits all" is there? Looks like you've got a couple more comfortable ones there too.

[Gordon Eyre]

It looks really nice Ryan. Well done.

[Stan Mitchell]

Clean design. Nice.

What kind of setup did you use for steaming the arm pieces?

[Prashun Patel]

Great job. You must be proud.

[gary Zimmel]

Real nice work on the chair Ryan. She turned out great..

[Ryan Eldridge]

Hey guys thank you for the compliments. I like it and my wife really likes it so it is a win win.

Stan, I used a wall paper steamer and expandable piece of stove pipe wrapped with insulation. I was able to keep the temp around 201 F in the pipe. My first go I let it steam for about 4 hours and then put it on my form, but go figure I put it in the form a little wrong so I ended up with a tangential bend instead of a constant radius.

So I went back to the pipe and cooked it for about 8 hours and redid it, came out better the second time. After reading up on it though I should have tracked down some air dried ash, the kiln dried stuff I was using does not take to steam real well and I had to muscle it more than I think I should have.

thanks again.
Ryan

[Jim Becker]

I really like that chair, Ryan!

[Peter Harbin]

Excellent Ryan. Danish Mod is one of my favorite furniture styles.

[Ryan Eldridge]

Thank you for the compliments. I really like the danish modern style and it was what I was trying to go for with this chair but with a little thicker cushions. There are some things I would like to change on the next iteration but it is a very comfortable chair and will last a long time. My wife liked being able to pick out the upholstery and have it put on the chair, luckily she talked me out of a fabric with a pattern, my minimal upholstery skills are not up to keeping patterns running straight while covering a cushion.

Here are a few more pic of the chair during the construction process as well as how I did the cushion frames.

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[david blakelock]

Ryan, great job on the chair. Did you have a plan that you worked from? I love the Danish modern look as well as am always on the look out for plans and ideas.

Thanks,

David

[Ryan Eldridge]

David,

I am sorry I thought I responded to this awhile back. I did not really have a plan to go from. I liked the look for the Sylvan easy chair from Beeker Parsons, but did not like the arms on it so I made changes to my design. I also made it pretty low since my wife and I have short legs so this way we can sit in the chair and keep our feet easily on the floor.

I think I saw my sketch of the chair in the garage the other day if you wanted me to scan it it.

Sorry for the slow response.

Ryan, great job on the chair. Did you have a plan that you worked from? I love the Danish modern look as well as am always on the look out for plans and ideas.

Thanks,

David

[david blakelock]

Ryan, no worries at all. If you have a sketch and don't mind scanning it I would greatly appreciate it. But please don't go thru any troubles to do it. You can send me a PM with the sketch. It looks pretty straight forward so I can probably just adapt the style to whatever dimensions that I would need. As an aside do you know of any good books on Danish Modern furniture? It seems there are a lot of books on the other classic styles, but little on Danish Modern. I have been searching the web for ideas and have been pulling photos of pieces that I like and adding them to the future build pile.

Thanks again for your reponse and great job on the chair.

David

[Zach England]

Does anyone know where I can get some plans for some scandinavian-mod chairs along these same lines? I am wanting to build one similar to the one on the right in this picture:
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I am having a really hard time wrapping my head around the angles and dimensions and am hoping to look at some plans I can modify or at least get some guidance from.

[Ryan Eldridge]

Zach,

Sorry I am not much of a help. I had a hard time locating plans so I came up with something that had simpler angles than what you posted so that I could sketch it out quickly. That is a nice looking chair though and would be fun to build. Probably can com eup wtih a plan using sketch up to help get the angles right.