The Adirondack Job
When I was working out of the 1200' industrial unit in Oakville, I used to get some crazy requests and inquires coming in from my yellow page ad. I found that 10% of them made sense, and 10% of those turned into actual business. One of the calls I got was from a distributor of teak garden furniture who needed some Muskoka chairs made to close a huge deal for Mount Tremblant. They were 6th in line subcontracted for outfitting the new village, so that meant I was 7th, which meant it was hard to get a straight answer from whatever designer or bean counter was actually making the decisions.
When "they" first said that they wanted the chairs coloured a bright yellow, red, blue and green, I mentioned that you'd want a light coloured wood for a dye to soak in and show well, so pine would be one... or... maple is light and is more "ski boot proof" I added... "Maple it is!" was the quick reply. OK... although maple isn't at all resistant to decay like pine, it turned out they only expected 2 years of service out of the chairs.
So 70 chairs and 35 round 24" tables to go with them. All I had to do was give them a price, and I wish I had quoted much higher it turns out, they would've taken it if it was over the moon; they had to fulfill the order. Oh well, that's business; live 'n learn. I hired 3 Sheridan students to help me for 3 weeks, and we got it done. The thing that really saved my bacon was that the unit next to me became vacant at the perfect time and I was able to rent it for one month to do assembly and store the final product.
The design was a mutation of 3 mail order plans I got. I made adjustments for strength, machining, ease of assembly etc. I've still got the jigs to make these, and as soon as I can come across a cheap supply of exterior grade wood (like recycled teak that can be left unfinished), I'll bang out a bunch for our back deck. Unfortunately, it's not even on the "honey-do" list; I might have to somehow bump it up. They're fun to make when you have all the patterns and jigs. Lots of screws though!
When "they" first said that they wanted the chairs coloured a bright yellow, red, blue and green, I mentioned that you'd want a light coloured wood for a dye to soak in and show well, so pine would be one... or... maple is light and is more "ski boot proof" I added... "Maple it is!" was the quick reply. OK... although maple isn't at all resistant to decay like pine, it turned out they only expected 2 years of service out of the chairs.
So 70 chairs and 35 round 24" tables to go with them. All I had to do was give them a price, and I wish I had quoted much higher it turns out, they would've taken it if it was over the moon; they had to fulfill the order. Oh well, that's business; live 'n learn. I hired 3 Sheridan students to help me for 3 weeks, and we got it done. The thing that really saved my bacon was that the unit next to me became vacant at the perfect time and I was able to rent it for one month to do assembly and store the final product.
The design was a mutation of 3 mail order plans I got. I made adjustments for strength, machining, ease of assembly etc. I've still got the jigs to make these, and as soon as I can come across a cheap supply of exterior grade wood (like recycled teak that can be left unfinished), I'll bang out a bunch for our back deck. Unfortunately, it's not even on the "honey-do" list; I might have to somehow bump it up. They're fun to make when you have all the patterns and jigs. Lots of screws though!
