kids' ladderback specs

I used to make kids’-sized ladderback chairs based on Jennie Alexander’s chair. Just shrunk down some. Above are two I made in 2009 when our kids were just turning 4 years old. They used them every day for several years. From time to time, I’ve had requests for specs for them so today I pulled out some notes from the 1990s and a bending form that I made a few years ago when I last made some of these. These notes follow JA’s chair pretty closely - so you might need to be familiar with that.  Best way is her book Make a Chair from a Tree from Lost Art Press. 

The chair stick is the critical component - a made a sketch with the pertinent bits on it. Remember, in the JA chair those rung positions are tangents, not centerlines. So the side rungs’ mortises are bored above the line, front and rear rungs’ mortises below it. HA! make a note - I forgot to put the overall length of the rear post - it’s 27 1/4”. I taper the top end of the post down to 7/8” wide and shaving the relief in the front of it brings it down to 3/4” thick. The taper begins at 14 1/2” from the bottom - same as the relief.  

Your mortise chisel determines the slat thickness. JA liked them really thin, 1/8”. I use 3/16”. 

The seat plan shows the angle I ended up with, very close to the 82° used on the JA chair. The front rungs are 13 1/2” overall including the 7/8” long tenons. Side and rear rungs are 10 5/8” overall length also 7/8” long tenons. Post diameter is 1 1/4”. 

And finally the bending form for the rear posts. I pulled this form down from the loft, it’s a more pronounced bend than the chair in the top photo. The head should be hardwood but the body of it can be most anything. The space between the body and the head should match your posts’ thickness.

Here’s a more recent kids’ chair, but with no scale it’s hard to tell for sure - but it’s the size outlined in these measurements.