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My father-in-law is retiring this year after a lifetime of teaching high school in New Jersey. He's also been a maker of Adirondack chairs, so I decided to honor his retirement with an Adirondack chair, although I'm afraid it may have turned out too nicely for traditional outdoor Adirondack chair duties!

The design is inspired by Michael Brown's Comfy Rondack chair, but with a more traditional feel. It is made of steam-bent African mahogany and entirely joined with maple dowels. Each arm is embellished with an inlaid compass rose of holly and walnut. It was finished with a custom blend of aniline dyes, two coats of BLO and many coats of wipe-on poly. The underside of the chair received two additional coats of spur varnish for better weather protection.

The build was an interesting adventure for me, with a number of new skills. A build diary can be found on my LJ blog here.

A full set of large pictures can be seen in this album.

Gallery

Comments

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Outstanding, and one of the "fanciest" Adirondack chairs I've seen. Beautiful work-your father-in-law will be very pleased I'm sure.
 

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520 Posts
Exceptionally nice chair. I bet he doesn't let it sit out in the elements! Very nice work.
 

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Why use spar varnish on the underside? That would be better used as a finish for the top sides than poly which is to hard and brittle for outside use.
 

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Wow, that is a beauty. That is the nicest Adirondak chair I've ever seen.
 

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That looks amazing.
 

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Not your typical adirondack chair. Absolutely beautiful.

With a couple of rockers on that and he'll never get out of it.

Great build and finish. I like the seat back and the arms.

I agree with the comment that spar varnish is better for the upper surfaces because of it's UV resistance.
 

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Great job
 

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Your FIL will love it; she's a real beauty.
 

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That's a beautiful Adirondack chair! And I agree-it's too nice for outside!
 

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Thanks everyone for the nice comments!

I had originally planned on finishing the whole chair in spar varnish, but spar varnish has a blue-gray tint that I thought would mute the nice warm color of the mahogany. Since it seemed unlikely that this chair was actually going to spend a lot of time out in the weather, I decided to use just poly on the show surfaces.
 

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No question scott ,it is to nice to go outside.Very impressive ,not the typical Adirondack chair,the table is very cool too.
 

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Very Nice Indeed Wayne! Thanks For Posting!
 

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I was going to say' "that's the most beautiful adirondack chair I've ever seen", but Woodbridge beat me to it. Beautiful wood matching, inlay, bending, and finish. Congradulations on a fantastic build.
 
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