instructables

Armchair 400 by Aalto?

by Olivier Iserbyt

A perfect replica of the icon chair by Aalto: Armchair 400. But is it perfect?

Look closely because actually this is a scale model of about 20cm x 13cm x 16cm. To teach myself to deal with
new materials and processes I made this scale model of the chair. In the next steps I will take you through my
process.

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Step 1: Research Dimensions

The first step is to figure out the different dimensions the chair will have. I found pictures of the original chair online
and the rough dimension. Going from there I drew the front and side face of the chair and proportionally rescaled
all the dimensions I would need. This way I had all the rough dimensions of everything and drawings of the views I
can use during the process.

(Note all dimensions are in mm)

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Step 2: Reserach Techniques

The chair exists of two main pieces, the seating and
legs.
My first idea to manufacture the legs was bending
plywood to the shape I need. But because of the
small scale of the legs the bends it needs to make are exact shape I wanted and still look good after I put
so sharp the plywood would crack under the tension
(even it you make it wet and steam it). So I had to
figure out an other way to manufacturing it. After
watching a lot of YouTube videos I decided to
laminate wood veneer to shape the legs.
YT video: Pre Bending Parts for Easy Laminating
For the seating I was thinking about shaping Seat
Foam to make it a real replica. After testing the seat
foam I noticed it would be very difficult to make the
covered it with leather (YT video: Cutting Seat Foam).
Instead of using foam I decided to use a piece of
wood that I would shape to desire to make sure the
chair is structural sound and the foam wouldn't mess
with the leather seating.

YT video: Bent plywood in 7 easy steps.

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Step 3: Legs Veneer Cut

Lets begin with the legs. - Wood glue

What you will need: - Band saw

- MDF (for the mold) Find some veneer (Maple is the best to bend) at a
local wood shop. Make sure you have a large piece to
- Maple veneer get enough layers out of it. We will make a mold of
about 8cm width to fit the two legs in one go. So I cut
- Cutting tools straps out of the veneer of 8cm width. Because I want
a thickness of 2.5cm I need 14 layers of veneer.
- glue clamps Make sure you check your veneer thickness and
adjust.
- Plastic foil

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Step 4: Legs the Mold

I glued a couple of scrap pieces of MDF together to
get a thickness of about 8mm. I glued the drawing
from before to cut out the inner mold for the leg with a
band saw. In the middle of this mold I drilled a big
hole where the head of the clamps will be. Using the
other pieces I created negative molds to clamp on the
outside of the veneer. To prevent the veneer sticking
to the mold I place baking paper on the mold and
plastic foil on the outside pieces.

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Step 5: Legs Glue Up

I tried different techniques to bend and glue up the NOTE: It would have been ideal if the direction of the
legs. By trial and error I found out that going slow in veneer grain would turn 90° with every layer. But the
the glue up is key. During my test runs I tried to glue veneer I got in the beginning wat not wide enough to
al the layers at once which failed over and over again. cover the whole stretch. To not mess us by gluing
different straps next to each other to cover the whole
So finally I took another approach. Every day I would distance I decided not to do it.
glue up a small piece of the legs (one corner or side
every day) with only half the amount of layers. Using NOTE 2: Why my first tests were a disaster? In test
a paint brush I applied glue in between the layers for one I pre-bended the veneer by making it wet in hot
the section I wanted to glue that day and clamped water, clamping it on the mold and letting it dry. Next I
everything together when done. I did this over and glued al 14 layers at once and clamped them. As a
over again till done. result it took to long to glue everything and half the
glue did not take well. At this point I did not have the
I did the same for the other half of the layers on top of negative molds on the outside yet so all the corners
the existing layers . After 12 days of gluing and drying had gaps in it. I used the negative molds on the
the glue up was complete and ready to process. second test. I glued up 5 layers now which was better
to apply the glue and the gaps were gone but after it
After drying I got the veneer of the mold but I notice it dried out the whole leg was totally bend and
is a bid bend. Luckily the 8cm width is more than unusable.
enough to get two 2,5cm out of it eventho it is a bit
bend.

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Step 6: Legs Cut and Sand

After drying out I detached the veneer from the mold and applied blue painters tape to minimize blowout while
using the band saw. I use the inner mold to stabilize the veneer while sawing. This way the veneer wouldn't
wobble up and down while using the band saw. I cut out two legs a bit wider than the width I need. Using a belt
sander I bring them down to the size I want and finish the edges.

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Step 7: Seating Shape

I had some beech blocks laying around which I used
to shape the seating. I divided the seating in two, the
vertical back block and the horizontal block. This
makes it easy to shape everything as I want.
First I use the drawing from the beginning to mark the
seating shape and use a band saw to cut it out. Then
I use a belt sander to shape the edges and curves.
When done both pieces together make a perfect
chair.
NOTE: This shape will define the chair part. Make
sure you sand it how you want because the leather
wont mask big mistakes.

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Step 8: Seating Leather Cover
Next up is covering the seat with leather. Use a piece
of,paper to get the dimensions right. Cut the leather
and sew together (to be honest I had a lot of help with
this so I am not the person to give you solid advice
about sewing, if you're not comfortable with it find
someone who can help you). I nailed and glued
(superglue) the ends of the leather on the wood
where the horizontal and vertical block come
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together. The vertical block has a big flap which will
cover the full underneath of the chair. This makes it
possible to secure the leather to the horizontal block
with nails and glue at the underside. Don't glue the
flap yet.
The holes and dowels are explained in the next step.
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Step 9: Assemble

First I assemble the chair. I drill holes in the vertical
and horizontal chair blocks to fit dowels. Glue in the
dowels and press the two pieces together and let dry.
Next you can glue the big flap to the underneath of
the seating and finish it.
Next up I bring together the legs and seating.
Because there will be no heavy load on the chair I
use metal pins. I chose not to glue them in to not
mess up the leather. I drill holes in the seating
through the leather and into the legs. Place the pins
and assemble the legs.
And we are done!

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Step 10: Armchair 400

The result! A miniature replica of the icon chair!

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