Introduction: Fixin' a Folding Camping Chair

About: Breaking and fixing things daily.
This tells how I repaired a camping chair redneck style.  All that was needed was a chair, tape, wood scraps, a bandolier strap, a needle, thread, soap... and some old fashioned ingenuity.  

Images:
1 - Back of chair, note the wood
2 - Front of chair with pillow
3 - Side of chair showing wood close up
4 - Left front corner from top
5 - Left front corner from underneath
6 - Right front corner from underneath
7 - Soap (effectively cleans BO)
8 - Underside of front of chair

I bought a collapsable cloth chair but after only a month the fabric was tearing at the corners.  A waste of $15 or so it seemed.  But then I had an idea---why not repair it?  At first I got ahold of some 550 cord and attempted to tie some lattice work underneath the seat so it would no longer tear.  This was successful except the chair was no longer comfortable.  Even if I put pillows on the seat, I had problems because the back became too low.  

Next idea: sew a strap on the underside on the front and the front corners.  i did this, pinching fabric together to take the tension of my butt in the chair off the seat and put it onto the strap.  I did not sew the strap straight across, but instead only in a few spots to catch all the force (and save time).  I took the strap from a low quality bandolier.  

It seemed to be a little better, but I was still having problems.  At this point, I realized in order to properly redistribute pressure, the back needed to be elevated.  I took a couple scraps of two by fours left over from previous wood projects and taped them under the back corners of the seat of the chair.  It has been two months since I made these alterations and the chair is still functional, although it can no longer be folded.  To maximize comfort, I added a couple pillows to the back of the chair.

There was still one major problem: the stench.  I used the chair quite a bit in the heat of the summer and let's just say the chair retained some sweat.  Once the smell became unbearable, I took copious amounts of liquid dish soap and water and scrubbed the seat.  Then I turned the chair over to drip/air dry overnight.  When I woke up in the morning, it didn't stink so bad.

For the record, I do not consider myself redneck.  I make plenty of small repairs, sometimes even tacky ones like this, but when I saw the redneck contest, I figured this would be a perfect fit.  I did not previously plan on submitting this Instructable so the only pictures here are the after-pics.  Hope ya all enjoy!  

Now it's time to get back to a little front porch sittin'...