This year’s summer solstice project was a bit less technology related (although I did write my own hello world OS in assembly[1]) as I made what I call a Sunset Magazine chair, but is more widely known as an Adirondack chair:

Context

So back in the last century when the internet was still coming of age and before the dot-com bubble burst there was still such a thing as print magazines and the possibility to have a subscription to them and have them delivered to your house via mail (snail mail not email). One such subscription I gave to my wife as a gift was Sunset as it was a magazine I had grown up with and and felt it was a required manual for living in the west. One issue had plans or the possibility to send a post card to request the plans (it was in the last century and understandably the exact details are now a little vague) to make the emblematic Sunset chair that I remember so many times on the cover (once again could be faulty memory). So the seed was planted that if I ever had a garden, well the first thing I would add would be a Sunset chair. So the sun and the planets aligned this year in such a way as just in time for my solstice vacation we had bought a small little cabin with a small little garden, and it was clear to me my solstice project would be a very hands on, hopefully not cutting fingers off type of project!

Implementation details

Plans

Well, needless to say, times change and while I was able to find an article the link to the PDF for the plans was no longer working:

But the internet in these times before the ai-com bubble burst has lots of sites ready to serve up content rife with advertisements and still real content and I found all sorts of options for plans that were freely downloadable it was only a matter of selecting one. In the end I settled on this site because it had an appeasing design and had a video from Home Depot on how to build it.

Material

With proper plans in hand now it was only a matter of finding the materials needed to build the chair:

which turned out more complicated than I anticipated because wood here in Spain is not sold in inches and feet and a speed square (that is actually not a square but really a triangle) was no where to be found.
Things were further complicated in that a “2x4” is not really 2 inches by 4 inches, rather it is actually 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches which I only discovered when watching a YouTube video to figure out what the heck the speed square was needed for.
So multiple conversions were needed to find what wood I would need to buy:

And multiple trips to multiple hardware stores with no luck finding wood that more or less matched the needed sizes. I was pretty close to having to accept my solstice week project would have to pivot and not be making my very own Sunset Chairs, but I did one last ditch effort to find a lumber yard and found one on the way to my small little cabin. I may have missed it on previous searches as it’s name is Maderas Marbella, because, well, it is located in Malaga which is 537km away (why it is called Maderas Marbella and not Maderas Malaga? I would ask you to ask the person who named a 2x4 a 2x4 when it really is a 1.5x3.5 and the person who named the speed square…). Arriving at Maderas Malaga Marbella I was very hopeful as it was a real lumber yard as I remember from my youth in California, but after waiting my turn my hopes were tempered when the person said he did not think they had those sizes of wood, but I could check at their warehouse that was only a short distance (thankfully not in Marbella nor Malaga). If I was out of place in the lumber yard, oh boy was I out of place in my pressed little polo shirt in the warehouse:

After waiting my turn the foreman reviewed my conversion chart and confirmed he did not in fact have the measurements I needed but he could find some close alternatives:

The only type of wood he could offer was fir which was not an outdoor wood but with a “lasur” it should hold up (I understood lasur to be a stain or varnish) so not having any other alternative displaced my little dog to the back of the wagon and loaded the material and trucked it home:

With regards to the missing “speed square”: after watching videos and discussions with my dad, I determined I would have to wait to experience the joys of using one of the very versatile almost magical Masonry like tools as there were none to be found here in Spain (might be due to construction mostly being based on cement as they used all their trees for armadas long ago). In its place I would rely on a trusty protractor and hope that my memories from my geometry class in the 8th grade were some of those ones that were more cemented in due to all the neuro activity we have when going through our teenage years

Building

So I unloaded all the wood in the little garden of my little cabin:

and then got started. This particular piece of the cut list started it all off:

• 2x4 @ 31 7/8” long, ONE end cut at 35 degrees off square to longest point, OTHER END cut at 20 degrees off square to shortest point.

Let’s just say that for me, someone who never had shop class in high school, it took a while to break down all the information in that line:

1. 31 7/8” long: How do I even find that on my tape measure??? Well, by counting the little lines between each inch (fortunately an american tape measure came over the pond with me way back when) and low and behold there are 7 lines between each inch!
2. ONE end cut at 35 degrees off square to longest point: hummm. That means on one end find 35º and cut at that angle, but be careful because that means the piece is actually longer then 31 7/8” because it goes in the other direction.
3. OTHER END cut at 20 degrees off square to shortest point: I have no idea but thanks to the picture and putting it next to the board I was able to figure out what to do, but have no capacity to explain it.

After lots of figuring out how to use a protractor I was able to do all the cuts and had I had a speed square think it would have been easier, but that is why each proper tool for each job increases productivity, where I am just in it for the fun and getting a Sunset Chair out of it. Here it does not look like much, but was a major challenge for me:

After that the next three cuts were almost like walking through the park:

1. 2x4 @ 20 3/4” long with BOTH ends cut PARALLEL at 15 degrees off square, long point to short point measurement (back legs)
2. 2x4 @ 20” (front legs)
3. 2x2 @ 26 1/2” long, longest point measurement, ONE end cut at 15 degrees off square (arm support)

and connecting them we begin to see a shape:

and in no time we have two sides ready and my little dog decides it is a good time for a break:

and then it actually starts taking shape:

and then taking form:

and then taking form like a Adirondack:

and then taking form like a Adirondack chair:

then it was a question of applying a layer of lasur:

And with left over scraps I was able to make an accompanying cocktail table (no plans or anything, now that I am an accomplished wood worker I just wung it!) and enjoying the sunset in my Sunset chair with a cool beverage was oh such a nice highlight of my solstice vacation!

Links, References and things that helped with this

• The Adirondack chair plans I used
• Great video on using speed square
• Another great video on using speed square
• Lumber yard where I got the wood

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).

[1] My hello world OS

I did spend one solstice vacation morning with coffee in bed and wrote a simple hello world OS following the steps in Nick Blundell’s wonderful Writing a Simple Operating System —from Scratch: