Recycled 55 Gallon Barrel Chair

Step 4 All Your Base are Now Belong to Us

By now you have been working on the top half of the chair long enough to be good and bored so this is an excellent time to refocus your attention span by working on the base. The first step is to cut the bottom out of the barrel. Once again, this is one of those important angle cuts, and for the same reason. We want to keep a portion of the thicker barrel ring intact as we cut away the base, so make a 45 degree angle cut along the inner ring to create a beveled edge. Take the former barrel bottom and set it to the side, we will use it again later.

Turn the base ring up on it's side and make two marks about sixteen inches apart 10" down from what used to be the middle of the barrel and cut along these lines. Set the barrel up, ringside down.

We are now ready to fit the base to the top of the chair. Rather than employing an abacus and arcane mathematical knowledge, the easiest way to achieve this is by sitting the top of the chair on the base and fitting the top of the base into the ring on the underside of the chair top. Once you have a nice fit, drill a couple more 9/64" holes and secure the base's shape with nuts, washers and bolts.

At this point we broke out the torch again and applied heat to the new seam. First, the heat allows the seams to "relax" into a more natural shape, that is visually appealing and appears more "finished". Secondly, we like to play with fire and tools that roar.

Comments

[JTaylor23]

Is that a new type of saw? It appears to be either be sawing it back together or cutting with the back of the blade? LOL This is a great project.