Making and installing chairs in a boat with your own hands

Every owner of an inflatable and PVC boat sooner or later faces the need to install a chair in it. By itself, it may not be very expensive, but many make their own seats. It's better than just buying such a part. Making the seat with your own hands, you can calculate everything for yourself as accurately as possible, as well as be sure of the reliability of the assembly.

Like any other thing, a homemade chair for your boat must meet certain specifications. It should be suitable for the degree of structural rigidity, the maximum allowable load on the boat, convenience, your height and other parameters. All homemade chairs are divided into several types.

• Rigid. For the manufacture of chairs of this type, moisture-resistant plastic or plywood is used. These designs are considered the most popular. They may differ in the type of fastening: they are fixed in one specific position (stationary), move along the boat or move along their axis (movable).

• Soft. Often this type is classified as a subcategory of hard chairs. They are an ordinary hard chair, but with soft padding.

• Inflatable. These chairs are made from nylon, which gives them high strength. It is this type that is considered the most convenient and practical due to the material and special design of the chair itself. They also have another number of advantages: small dimensions, weight, ease of transportation in a car over long distances.

To create a chair for your boat you will need:

• measuring tape, pencil, paper (to create a drawing);
• 1 sq. m durable PVC fabric;
• sewing accessories, scissors, fasteners;
• building brackets or screws;
• frame material (depending on your needs: wood, metal).

Assembling a homemade chair does not cause any difficulties for those who have had to deal with this at least once. To get started you need minimal knowledge in drawing and tools.

It can be quite easily converted without any skills. Just unscrew or saw off the legs from it, and then install it in the same way as if you were installing a homemade chair (instructions below). Of these chairs, it is easiest to make swivel chairs. It is also very easy to make a boat seat with a folding back from office chairs. To do this, follow these steps.

1. Take a chair and saw off the legs from it, they will no longer be useful to you.
2. Saw off the back from the chair so that tubes 3-5 cm long protrude from the side of the seat.Saw off carefully so that there are no notches, and if they appear, then grind them with sandpaper or a file.
3. Buy 2 loops with latches. Use them to reattach the back and seat. Before fastening, do not forget in which direction the back will fold. The most comfortable option when it folds back, and the most compact when it lies on top of the chair seat.
4. After all these manipulations, proceed with the installation of the chair in your boat (instructions below).

The complete process for making a boat chair with your own hands is as follows.

1. First you need to create a drawing of the future design. All boats are different, so you can not make a universal drawing. Measure your boat carefully, and then use your measurements to find the best fit for your seat. For the greatest convenience, draw the frame of the structure separately, and then separately the finished structure, in order to better understand what and how to assemble.
2. Do not forget that in order to create a drawing, you must decide on the type of chair (hard, soft, etc.).
3. After creating a thumbnail, transfer all the data to whatman paper in real size. This will be the fabric cutout template.
4. Once you have transferred all the data to the Whatman paper, you can start making parts. Take the templates and use them to cut out the necessary parts from durable PVC fabric.
5. Once you have all the trim parts, they can be joined according to your drawing (use the strongest thread you can find).
6. When you get a full-fledged case, you need to strengthen all the seams.You can use different methods, but the most effective are shoemaker's, and better construction glue and insulating construction tape (you must choose one of the two). Use glue or tape to go over all the seams and joints of your cover, then, if it was glue, leave it to dry for a day in a dry place.

Your case is ready, now it's time to think about filling it. You can make a hard chair by making a frame for it according to your drawings, you can fill the lining with something soft (foam rubber or something similar), or you can make the chair inflatable. To do this, you need to fulfill a few more conditions.

1. If you are making an inflatable seat, you don’t need a frame, of course.
2. Install an air valve in a convenient place to inflate more conveniently. After that, go through the sealant again and wait for it to completely dry.
3. When the whole structure is sealed, you need to check it. Inflate your seat and then place it in a container of water. If everything is fine, and the chair does not descend, then you can proceed with its installation on the boat. If there are problems with tightness - just fix them with a sealant.

If you decide not to make an inflatable chair, then you should stuff it with something. Foam rubber is best suited for this purpose. Some use a synthetic winterizer, but this should not be done. Due to frequent use, it quickly falls into tangles, then you have to unravel the chair to unravel them. To fill the chair, you must do the following steps.

1. Sew the chair completely, leaving only one hole (5-8 cm in diameter) to fill the seat. Since the seat is not inflatable, you do not need maximum tightness.An ordinary seam with a strong thread is enough, at most - then go through this seam with glue for strength.
2. Now you need to prepare the "stuffing", depending on your preferences. If you want not a very soft, but an elastic chair, then you should fill it with layers of foam rubber of the maximum size that you can push through the filling hole. If you want it to be soft, cut the filler into small cubes.
3. Once you've completed the filling procedure, sew up the opening and go over the seam with glue to increase strength.

It's time for the most difficult part of the whole process - the installation of the finished product. Although this is not very difficult for an experienced person, it will definitely cause difficulties for a beginner. Remember that you must do everything painstakingly, slowly, otherwise you can damage the boat. There are quite a few ways to install seats, however, these are considered the easiest of all.

If you decide to make a swivel chair, then you will need special mounts for the stands. You can either buy them or make them yourself from a metal profile. Such models of seats are installed on cylinders. The first thing you need to do is install stands. They can be made from cans or several aluminum tubes with a wall thickness of at least 0.7 cm.

next step fix the stand with the holders, and then check its performance. In fact, this was the most difficult part, because now you only need to screw your chair. This can be done in any convenient way, for example, using several self-tapping screws. If you are fixing a folding seat, then there must be at least four screws.

If you made a soft seat, then you will also have to install a stand. Do everything as in the instructions above (install the stand, and then secure it with the holders). Now you will need strong belts or equally strong and good clamps. Using two of these straps, you should attach your chair to the stand.

This method of installation is good because it is very fast and at the same time quite reliable. To secure the stand (if you made it from aluminum tubes), use bolts and turn the tubes in different directions. Although at first glance it seems that fixing the seat with straps or clamps is not the best idea, but this is a mistake.

How to make a swivel chair in a PVC boat with your own hands, see the next video.