Recycled 55 Gallon Barrel Chair

Step 6 Final Touches, Variations and Feats of Strength

You are essentially finished, but there are a couple of things you can do now that will really finish this thing up nicely. We made several cuts and those edges c an be surprisingly sharp, so we need to smooth them out. You can dig out the sandpaper for this, but we found that heating the edges with the torch softened them nicely and like with the base, the application of gentle heat after assembly allows the pieces to "relax" into a more natural shape. As always, be careful not to overheat things.

Now all you have to do is make sure all your connections are tight and that your top and bottom are lined up and fitted. If you like you can epoxy them together, but I prefer to leave them as separate pieces. This helps in two ways. One, the way they fit together allows for a certain amount of natural "swivel", which can be made even better with a little lubrication. Secondly, by being able to remove and use the top alone, you have also created a great little beach chair.

There you go, that is all it takes to make your own comfy chair from a recycled 55-gallon drum. As you can see from the picture below it is certainly sturdy enough for hard use. We have piled over 400 pounds in it with no sign of weakness. The other pictures show some of the variations we have created, higher arms, a faux wingback, the horribly misconceived "holy" base. They all have their own charms and pitfalls, but part of the fun is the customization. Speaking of that, they shine up nicely with a windex cleaning followed by some Armor All or you can use fusion paint to customize the color.

The thing that these pictures do not show is how truly comfortable these chairs are to sit in, even for extended periods of time. The spring loaded seat and lumbar support make these viable pieces of furniture, rather than simply a design exercise.

You might also want to take a moment to look around your work area and note, that with the exceptions of the pieces you trimmed off the arms and seat back, which should have been minimal, there are no pieces left over. Nothing to throw in the trash, yep we used every piece.

Comments

[manonegra]

The third seat of the 4th picture seems really happy!!

[SIRJAMES09]

they look awesome!!!! 8=D

[davidkichi]

Awesome instructable and very wittingly labelled!!! I'm curious if instead of tossing out whatever left-over pieces of plastic you could use them to reinforce the armrests or to heat them up into plastic ball caps to cover the metal bolts if not too toxic? Btw, would love to see a spray painted version in another color!

[Vari-Lance]

I think washing out the bottom half of the seat, filling it with ice and beer, would make for a great "Cool Tailgating Chair"!!

[arne hendriks]

Just the bottom part is open, the part where you sit is closed, so you would have to do a redesign. Nice idea!

[quesoman]

 sounds like a good idea but would you want to have to get up every 5 minutes to give everyone a beer?

[mason0190]

add a hose and a spigot! beer. kssssssssssh. beer. kssssssssssh.

[Crystalkini]

I absolutely love them... Such a fabulous recycling idea... would you sell them?  Depending on the price... I might be interested!

[Ole bally]

 with a hole cut in the 'seat' - awesome 'dunny' for the bush!

[jeffbouldin]

If it holds the Monkey it must be great!!!

[jchace]

Great design!!

[IdahoDavid]

First, what is the source for your barrels? Second, and I mean this in all kindness, it has a bit of a Porta-Potty look to it. I can also see this as the throne portion of a homebuilt composting toilet. All in all a very nice design.

[Monkeybrad]

iPodGuy is right, we receive vanilla extract in these barrels and new foodsafety guidelines make it impossible to return them to the vanilla people for reuse, so we had to find more ways to use them. We came up with this chair design after we built rainwater harvesters and compost bins for our own use at our plant and for our staff. The porta-potty look is a function of the source material, we did not want to paint it because I love the fact that it still looks like our barrels, but Krylon's Fusion paint can fix that. The design itself was dictated by what the material would allow us to do without making the process too complex. Our guiding principle was to use all the pieces of the barrel and minimal "extra parts". You can even cut out the hardware, by "welding" the plastic together with heat, but that is far more challenging and makes the design less accessible. We wanted something that anyone could make using simple tools, so this is what we came up with. As far as the self-composting toilet thing, I don't know much about them, but this is a comfortable chair, the seat is sturdy enough to support having a hole cut in it and the plastic is easy to sanitize, so I do not see any reason why it could not be adapted well. I love to see different uses for things, isn't that what this is all about? Thanks for the comments.

[iPodGuy]

He said his company gets vanilla extract in them.

[robbtoberfest]

I like the storage possibility under the seat.