PVC Rocking Chair

There are many rocking chairs available in the market but usually these chairs are made of wood or steel I have always wanted a rocking chair but bending steel and wood is pretty much difficult for a DIY project. The only material that I could think of which could bend and have a reasonable strength is PVC.

In this instructable I am going to show you how I made a rocking chair using PVC pipes.

• PVC pipes
  • 1 inch
  • 1/2 inch
  • 3/4 inch
• Wood screw
  • 1 inch
  • 1/4 inch
  • 1.5 inch
• Fine sand
• Plywood min 4*4 ft
• Wood clamps
• Heat gun
• Nails 2 inch
• Nylon Belt 2 inch wide
• Masking tape
• Hammer
• Drill machine

There are two common types of PVC pipes schedule 40 and schedule 80. The most important difference is in their design. Though the outside diameter of a schedule 80 and a schedule 40 pipes are the same, schedule 80 pipe has thicker walls. Since different wall thicknesses are beneficial in different situations, the ASTM(American Society for Testing Materials) came up with a 40 and 80 system for classifying the two common types.

In this Instructables I have used schedule 40 pipes for the chairs since it is cheaper. Although schedule 80 would be ideal and also recommended for this chair.

I am a novice in woodworking and have just started hence I have no idea how to design a rocking chair, upon researching from different websites and looking through designs available online, and understanding how a rocking chair works I started designing my chair using fusion 360. I had to take help from a free template available online to design this chair. Since the outer diameter of both schedule 40 and schedule 80 are the same it was easy to design the chair considering the common outer diameter for the pipes.

I tried my best to avoid elbow sockets or any type of socket to keep the curve as natural and continuous as possible.

After designing the chair in Autodesk Fusion 360 I measured the lengths required for different parts of the chair corresponding to their respective pipe diameters. They are as follows.

• Back rest
  1/2'' diameter, 54'' length
• Main rest
  1/2'' diameter, 52'' length
• Spiral Support
  1/2'' diameter, 92'' length
• Legs
  1'' and 3/4'' diameter, 100'' length
• Supports
  1/2'' diameter, 21.5'' length

Lets start with something simple. This step will help you understand how the PVC pipe behaves when heated and help you by training to mold the heated PVC pipe. Make sure your safety glove are on.

Cut pieces of 3/4 inch pipe of 21.5 inches length. Heat the end of the pipe using a heat gun. When the end has reached the proper temperature you will notice the pipe deforms and sags on its own. Make sure you are rotating and moving the pipe back and forth on the heat gun to avoid burning of the plastic.

Once the PVC pipe is soft you are ready to mold it into desired shape. For this particular parts we need the ends of the pipe to be flats hence I made use of Quick grip clamps to flatten the soft heated pipe by compressing it in between the clamp jaws.

Let the pipe cool down in between the jaws or to fasten the process you can dip the end into the cold water.

Repeat the heating and molding process on the other end of the pipe.

When flattening the other end of the pipe make sure the flat end is parallel and not twisted to newly\ flattened end.

similarly repeat the process for the other two pipe parts.

Although this is an easy process but the heat gun only heats up a small portion of the pipe. Hence I made use of sand to the whole length of the pipe internally for further parts.

Before starting make sure the surface of the plywood is perfectly flat, mine wasn't so I had to make use of dead weights to keep it flat on the ground. Print the templates provided. If you happen to print it on A4 sized paper as I did you need to align and assemble the papers using masking tape. Make sure the print is properly scaled. Fix the printed paper on the plywood using adhesive tape or glue.

Hammer 1.5 inch length nails on the plywood along the template curve at a reasonable distance from each other to create a jig for heated pipe. Use a scrap pipe to properly align the nails on the curve.

You may have noticed from the images that I have only nailed the template on the inside curve of the template because this where most of the part of the pipe would be in contact with the nailed jigs.

Start heating sand in a large vessel on a stove. Make sure your safety gloves are on and you are heating the sand in an open environment. Stir the sand in between to make sure the heat is transferred evenly. 260C to 300C is ideal temp of sand for our project.

1. Measure the length of the pipe required from the template using a flexible tape. Cut an extra 2 inch from the required length of the pipe.
2. Tape one end of the pipe using a duct tape.
3. Fill in the pipe with heated sand. I have made use of tin funnel to fill the pipe with heated sand. The pipe will soften and become wobbly.
4. Place the heated soft pipe and bend it on the nailed jig making sure the pipe is in contact with the nails. I have used brick to make sure the pipe does not displace away from the template curve.
5. Let the pipe cool. you can use wet cloth to fasten the cooling process.
6. Mark the extra length of pipe from the template.
7. Once the pipe is at room temperature empty the sand from the pipe.

I was trying to bend the 3/4 inch pipe and it cracked. My initial thought was the sand was not heated enough but it was not true. Pipes with larger diameter require a little bit of time to heat up.

Repeat the same process two times using 3/4 inch pipe as we did for the main and back rest except for let the pipe heat up a bit before bending.

You can use external heat source such as heat gun to help smoothly bend the pipe.

Repeat the same heating and bending process with 1/2 inch pipe. Make two Spiral support.

Here the two spiral of the support are of different dimensions hence make sure to mark the front part of spiral support as front using a marker pen.

For our next part we need it to be extra strong hence I reinforced 1 inch pipe with 3/4 inch pipe. 3/4 inch pipe slides smoothly inside 1 inch pipe. Make sure the brand of pipe you are using slides smoothly.

Bend the heated reinforced pipe along the curve of the template . Be cautious when bending this part since this is going to be the main part of our rocking chair. Make sure the pipe is bend true to the template. Make two legs by repeating the same bending process.

Make sure the part which are made two times such legs, spiral support, hand rest are identical to each other. If not make small correction by cutting and sanding.

Lay flat the legs of the chair on floor and insert the spiral support keeping in mind that the front of the spiral come front of the legs i.e chair. Do notice the bank spiral is tangent to the back rest bend of the legs. please refer the images.

Mark the points where the spiral touches the legs. Drill holes corresponding to the size of the wood screw on the center of the pipe of the spiral support at the 4 marked points. this will be helpful when screwing.

Use clamps to properly hold the spiral support in center to the leg pipe keeping in mind the marked points on the support matches marked points on the legs.

Screw the support and spiral using a drill machine.

Repeat the same with other set of leg and spiral support.

Once again make sure both the screwed legs are identical to each other.

Use a clamp to hold the Main rest perpendicular to the Legs and fix it using 1 inch wood screws. You can move the Main rest back or forth according to your posture or liking. Now screw the other leg perpendicular to the main rest and leg assembly.

Screw the Supports made in step 2 to the bottom rocker and the back rest pipes of the Legs. Make sure the distance between the two legs is same all over i.e. rockers and back support.

Similar to the main rest screw the backrest to the legs. You can Move the back rest up and down before screwing according to your posture and height.

This would be a perfect time to paint the chair before moving to the seat. Since I wanted the PVC pipes to be clearly visible I did not paint the chair.

I am using 2 inch wide nylon belt to weave and make seat. I Started by cutting 24 inch length of nylon belt and screwing it horizontally to the chair. I continued this along the curve of the chair.

Take a seat on the chair and position your hand on the chair comfortably. Mark the position on the chair. Screw the hand rest to the chair according to your hand position.

Upon sitting I found that the chair was oscillating side ways too when rocked. To reduce this unnecessary movement I made a small z bend supports from 1/2 inch pipes and screwed it diagonally to the rockers and seat base of the chair. This will also provide proper stiffness and retain the curvature of the rockers.

Cut all the extra protruding pipes and clean the chair. I attached end caps to the ends of the rockers this will also act as stoppers for the chair.

I know you may be having many questions such as :

Will the rockers hold the weight of a human?

Will it deform upon sitting?

Is it comfortable?

And the most important does it rock?

To answer all these question I have made a small video of me sitting and rocking this DIY PVC chair.

(p.s. I am 160cm (5'3 feet) and weigh around 70 kg (154.324 lbs.) Since I have made use of standard template this chair is bit bigger for and hence it can be seen in the video that I have to raise my heels to rock the chair.)

Hope this answers all the questions.