OK, I found my little scraps of paper with the plans, and will try to make my hand-scrawled notes understandable.

If you were to look at the chairs face-on, you would see 8 long pieces that make up the chair back, 8 shorter pieces that make up the seat, and 9 very short pieces that join the back to the seat. Let's refer to the pieces by number, from left to right (or right to left, it doesn't matter): Back 1 through 8 (B1, B2, B3, etc); Middle 1 through 9 (M1, M2, M3, etc); and Seat 1 through 8 (S1, S2, S3 etc).

The length or each 2x2 slat is as follows:

B1, B8: 110 cm
B2, B4, B5, B7 : 82.5 cm
B3, B6: 76.5 cm

M1-M9: 20 cm

S1, S2, S4, S5, S7, S8: 38 cm
S3, S6: 84 cm

The slats vary in length because some of them make up legs as well as being part of the seat/back. Of the seat slats, all but S3 and S6 will have their ends butt up against corresponding slats that make up the back. S3 and S6 back slats butt up against slats that make up the seat (and legs).

Anyways. Each slat will have 2 holes drilled through it. Make sure, of course, that the holes in each slat are parallel to each other, not at right angles. My threaded rods were 1/4", so the drill bit was 1/4 inch also.

B1-B8: one hole at 5cm from the "top" end (i.e. what will be the hightest point of the chair back), and another hole at 72.5 cm from the top.

M1-M9: holes are each at 5 cm from either end.

S1-S8: one hole at 5 cm from the "front" (i.e. the edge of the chair that will be behind your knees), and one hole at 34 cm from the front.

Run your slats onto lengths of threaded rod. This bit of construction is fiddly. If I remember correctly, I started with the centremost pieces and worked out to either side, like this:

Run rods through the top and bottom holes of M5. Take B4 and B5, and run them onto the rods (using the 72.5cm holes) so that they are snug agains M5. Run a third rod through the top (5cm) holes of B4 and B5. Do the same for S4 and S5, using the rod that does NOT includ B4 and B5; the 34cm holes will be used to fit the slats next to M5 and a fourth rod will run through the 5cm holes. Then take M4 and M6, and run them onto the rods next to B4/S4, and B5/S5. Then run B3 and B6 on, etc etc etc.

I find it easiest to do this with the chair flat on the ground, looking not like a chair at all. Do not snug the top ends of the B pieces or the front edges of the S pieces together until you have all the pieces in place.

When you do have all the slats in place, wind a nut and washer onto each threaded rod, and tighten all the slats together. The back and seat will take on a curve as you do this - very cool to see it all finally come together like a chair. Cut off the protruding ends of rod and grind them down smooth.

The first chair I made, I used a handsaw and a drill. It took all freaking day. Once I had the technique down, it was a piece of cake to make a whole bunch of them at once. It's best to use a drill press rather than a hand drill - your holes will be much straighter.

Hope this all makes sense!!!

One chair takes 3 8-foot 2x2's. The rods are 3-foot lengths, but you do end up cutting a fair bit off.

Thank you SO much for going to all the trouble of transcribing your plans for these cool chairs. Neighbor has a drill press I can use - excellent idea. Will report on my progress.

Best wishes from Sugar Hill, GA,
Rosie

You are so welcome, Rosie. Let me know if you'd like the side table plans as well (I'll have to go outside measure a few bits because my plans are very sketchy!). They are a nice accompaniment to the chairs - a place to put your wineglass or to rest your feet when you lean back with a good book. They don't fold, though.

what's a baja chair? I'd love to see a pic!

Me too! I googled the term, but I'm not coming up with anything that looks like the plans describe (if that makes sense).

Yeah, sorry, I don't think I've got the name 'baja chairs' right although I swear the name sounded something like it...

I made a couple of these chairs on holiday last week as a gift for my sister, and I need to revise my instructions - too bad there's no editing function on this board to include revisions in my original instruction post. Anyhow:

IMPORTANT
You really do need to bash the slats together when threading them onto the rods (I used a hammer, but a rubber mallet would probably be better).

And - when assembling the chairs, do make sure that you've got the slats properly organized so that the chair will indeed take on a chair shape once you start trying to fold it up (trying to take slats off the rods sucks!)

As for a picture...

{{gwi:1738}}

cool! Thanks for the pics!

I couldn't quite picture the chairs reading the transcribed plans... I see, now! Great idea! If I had to put a name to those chairs, I'd call them Baja, too! It fits, for some reason!

Thank you for going through all that trouble with regards to the plans... I'm filing them in my little folder of things I want to build in the future! Now, if I can just convince the husband that we need a set of those!

I, for one, would be very interested in the accompanying tables! Baja tables, I presume? LOL!

But seriously, great plans! Thanks for sharing! Very cool!

Ha! I need my online plans because I am on the other side of the continent from home, and don't have my scraps of paper. (It would be smart to put the plan transcription on my laptop, no?)

Anyway, I found the correct name for these chairs!! They are called Belize chairs (at least it's a B-word...), aka Cayo chairs and Clam chairs.

So there you go!