I saw an ad on Facebook for someone giving away a pile of scrap metal. I'm not a scrap hauler, but I figured I'd offer to take it. My brother does recycle and maybe he could make a few bucks. Anyway, the pile contained miscellaneous broken bird cages, tangled chicken wire, a shelf, and some metal chair frames.
Admittedly, my first interest was in the cages. I could fix them up and resell them for a small profit. But in sorting through the pile I found four old folding chairs among the tangled remains of burnt aluminum lawn chairs. They're rusty, missing both the seats and the backs, and have a design that I'm still not able to find online. The part where the legs meet just above the seat area are groove-and-slot style. How neat is that? The backs have a screw on either side, but no indication of what the back may have looked like. The seat also has curious fasteners that stick up and have no screw hole. I wonder if they're old enough to be swivel locking - with the wing-nut-looking piece that slides over the tab to hold it in place.
I was so excited to start the project that I've already been looking at fabric and checked into availability of foam padding. I'm heading to the store tomorrow for other stuff, but need to check on the price of a set of boards for the seat bases.
I took out the handy Dremel 3000 that I got last year to repair rabbit cages, and set to work buffing the rust off. I got two chairs done so far. Here's a before and after of one of them.
I'm all kinds of excited for this project, but I think it's going to take longer than I hope due to a lack of extra money to buy the needed supplies (lumber, foam, fabric, and hardware). I will post updates as I make progress!