Basic Woodworking Part 3: An Adirondack Chair

The September issue of Popular Mechanics included this article on how to make a simple Adirondack chair using only two ten foot long 2x10 boards. With my new saw, the job was a piece of cake and only took an afternoon. I asked the employees at Home Depot to cut the boards roughly in half (following the measurements listed in the article) so that the boards could fit in my car.

Here are the marked up boards ready to be cut.

I spent most of the afternoon cutting the boards to size, including ripping one of the boards down the middle to form paired sets for the legs and armrests.


It took many tries and a lot of googling to figure out how to properly rip wood on a radial arm saw. It turns out you want to push the wood against the direction of the saw while ripping; in contrast, you want to pull the saw towards you in the direction the blade is spinning while crosscutting.

All of the boards cut up and ready to be screwed together.

At this point, I sanded all the individual pieces, because it's a lot harder to sand the large areas and corners when the whole piece is put together.

Carefully screwing the legs together at the correct angle was the trickiest part. 

Here it is, all screwed together! I used glue for the armrest supports for an extra strong hold. Now I just have to do a final sanding of some of the corners and waterproof it with some Thompson's WaterSeal.

The final product: 

My dad suggested using a solid white stain to match the railing, so I'll let the WaterSeal wear down naturally for a bit, then sand it off and restain it.