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What could be better to charge up your halloween then an Electric chair. As a static display or with an animatronic dummy on it shaking and rattling about, its a great addon to your display. To make the chair I started with some old garden bordering wood. I had some in my yard from some gardening failures the previous owners had tried. You can also just use regular 4x4's from the hardware store. For me the borders were better because they were already well aged. I simply cut the rounded edges off and sanded them down to get all the gunk from laying outside they collected. |
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From there I marked off the slots for the back and the rear seat support. It seems the best height for the seat is approx 18 inches from the floor. This is what about every chair in my house was. I also made the length of the slats about 19 inches long. With each of the slots in the back at 1/2" deep it made them 18 inches from post to post.The fitting of the slots should be fairly tight and require you beat the supports in with a rubber mallet. use wood glue in the slots to help secure the supports. I then made the slots for the left and right seat supports. |
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Cutting the front legs from more of the gardening borders I cut them about 26 inches long. Again I slotted them for the rest of the seat supports at about 18 inches from the floor. All the remaining supports are also 19 inches long to make it a square. It will seem too large but dont worry about it. Remeber to put wood glue in the slots here too. |
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If you've ever seen the underside of a chair you will also notice that under the seat is four diagonal pieces in each of the corners. These are screwed to the legs, and then glued and screwed to the supports. This reinforces the chair so it wont wobble and try to fold on itself. Not shown in this picture, I also added a middle support from front to back. a 2x4 cut to fit between the back and front supports and screwed into place from the inside using angled holes. I did this so the screws wouldn't show. I only added this support because I didn't have a solid piece of wood to make the seat top. Instead I had to use two pieces of plywood because I didn't have any one piece that was big enough. | 
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So now we have the chair itself finished. You cant really tell in the photo that the seat is made of two parts. The arms are more 2x4's cut to fit with a small amount of overhang. This instills the image of the victim clutching the ends of the arms as they are getting a toasty brown. All we have to do from here is simply add the head electrode helmet and leather straps for the hands and feet. You can also stain the chair a different color if you don't really like the bare wood look. | 
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