Shuffle Chair
Winner: Most Creative Chair of the Industrial Design Furniture Fair 2011
Inspired by a bent deck of cards, Shuffle Chairs plywood layers separate as do the layers of an onion. The layers bend to support the weight of the user with the support of hidden foam inserts between layers.
Having never worked with plywood, I was very interested in the spring properties. The exploration began with laminating 3 and 4 layers of 1/32" veneer. This was quickly abandoned after seeing how flexible the lamination was and how many veneer sheets were required to create one of the chairs layers.
1/8" Baltic Birch plywood was substituted for veneer. 40" x 22" sheets were cut and soaked in a pool to loosen the wood grain and increase flexibility for the first prototype.
The first prototype was comprised of eight layers so a variable angle jig was needed to laminate the first layers. Sheet metal bent and kept its shape during each lamination.
Drying the plywood layers. The prototypes eight layers were made of 2 sheets each; the layers were a 1/4" thick.
Layers were dried for 24 hours. The spring back after removing the fishing line was minimal.
Plywood layers in reverse order.
The rough edges and glue globs were cut away with a jigsaw.
Gluing the eight layers together.
Mid Project Review
The chair was originally wall mounted. This limited the use of the furniture to very few areas which would be able to support it. Flipping the chair over and laying it on the ground allowed it much more freedom.
The Shuffle Chair prototype was too heavy for users to move around. Reducing the total layers from eight to 5 but increasing the number of plywood sheets per layer would keep the springiness and stability.
Five OSB jigs were created - one for each layer of the chair.
Many clamps were used to laminate the edges of each layer.