Sounds like a plan. Whichever of the two you use I'm sure it will hold
up better than the Adirondack chairs I built from soft 1" #3 Pine. All
the ones I sold were totally painted with exterior house paint or oil
stained with Thompsons or Penafin.

I set one unfinished Pine chair and footrest outside for the last two
years, rain, sun, freez, 110 degrees; as a test. The wood has actually
held up pretty well. Just this summer as the heat has come on the glue
gave out and the staples are starting to come loose in some spots. I
used 3, 1/4" x 2" stables at each 3x1 slat. I think I'll go all screws
in the future or maybe just add one screw an drop to 2 staples at each
end.

I had this brilliant idea I could make a business of these chairs.
Using my gang ripper, pocket screws and some really cool fixtures
(jigs) I could cut and build a dozen of these chairs in a day, easy.
They were in 4 pieces, a base, two arm assemblies and a back. These
pieces could be assembled by the buyer using 1/4"-20 x 2" galvanized
carriage bolts. Also had a nice foot rest too and a table.

I assumed I could use a house sprayer and 5 gallon buckets of cheap
exterior paint. Problem was spraying these out was a nightmare. The
house sprayer laid down way too much paint, didn't get in the gaps and
would have killed my profits. So I took to hand finishing them with
oil stain or latex. Looked great in white and blue kind of chalky
beach color stains. Again, labor was 3x the build time just to finish
them.

I set up a road side stand right on a busy intersection with an empty
lot in the town I live in. Sold out 20 sets (2 chairs, 2 foot rests, 1
table) in two days at $250 a set during a heat wave. Not bad since the
material was less than $50 a set, much less if I recall right. But the
labor on finishing killed me.

I finally found a good wholesale supplier of Cedar and will likely
revive the business next season, to late to ramp up now. The cedar can
go totally unfinished and removes my labor problem. I have a few
nurserys that will take them on consignment, on my terms and once they
sell a few I assume they will start buying them.




On Jun 14, 6:06 pm, Georgepag wrote:
On Jun 13, 9:43 pm, "James \"Cubby\" Culbertson"
wrote:





"Patriarch" wrote in message

.136...

I can't imagine that ipe is unavailable in most of North America. It's
certainly for sale at most lumber dealers near San Francisco.

Doesn't the Internet go everywhere? ;-)

Save the mahogany for the Goddard repro...

Patriarch

Well I haven't been able to find it anywhere in the state of New Mexico. I
could order online but jaysus, shipping and all on a couple of hundred bf of
Ipe would probably be unreasonable (although when compared with getting the
mahogany locally, it might be in line). I could ask a dealer to order it
in but their minimum is 5000 bf. No thanks.
Cheers,
cc

After calling a number of lumber yards this is where I'm at. I can
get white oak easily but I would have to mill all my own dimensional
lumber. Not a real problem, I've got the tools, but I don't know if
I want to spend all that time. Forget Cypress, it's a lot more costly
than the oak is here. I can get dimensional mahogany (2x4x8&10,
2x6x8&10) for a good price at a local yard.. I've purchased Mahogany
from here before to do a deck railing and that is the quality of it.
So, I think it will be either Cedar or Mahogany. I have to go to the
yard and check on the quality of the Mahogany.

George- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -