Camping Chair- Upcycle Design Report

My first inspiration for this project came from the material itself. Since the goal of this project is to upcycle, I started by thinking about sources of waste in my life. This led me to want to base my project around bike tubes. I was also inspired by the fact that I don’t own a camping- chair, so it seemed like a no-brainer to combine both of these sources of inspiration and make a chair out of bike tubes. Functionally, I wanted my chair to be compact and pretty simple. Aesthetically I was going for a somewhat retro rustic camping aesthetic; like the kind of chair you might find in a lakeside cabin.

I began this process using SolidWorks to make a model, so that I could better envision the dimensions and angles of my chair. Once I had a CAD model I drew out the shapes for my chair on a piece of plywood. Next I cut out my pieces and added holes in order to slide dowels through. After this, I assembled the back and seat of the chair. At this point, I had to rethink my idea of using bike tubes to make the seat of the chair. Originally I had planned on wrapping and weaving the bike tubes around the dowels that help to make up the frame of the chair. However, I realized that the tubes would be difficult to reconnect and I thought that tying knots in them would ruin the aesthetic. As I was trying to decide what to do next, I found some nylon webbing in my garage and decided to use that instead. I then sewed loops at the ends of the webbing in order to slip it around the dowels. After this it was just a matter of sliding the pieces of the chair together. 

In the future I would like to stain the wood to really finish it up. I would also like to experiment with other ways to actually make the seat out of bike tubes as I had first planned. However, since it isn’t very comfortable I might come up with another design before staining and giving bike tubes another shot. 

Below is a link to my presentation

Presentation