Recycled plastic tube chair

I haven't blogged for a few weeks because I've been making real-life art, such as this thing:


It's a chair made of reclaimed plastic tubes. They're throw-aways from the assembly line where my friend works. It took about two weeks to build. I designed that hexagon pattern on the computer. We decided the hexagons would be better than flat rows in order to leave gaps and therefore make it lighter. It was really exciting to see it go from design to real life.

We drilled holes in each tube and tied them together with about 100 zip ties (why are zip ties so expensive, by the way? About $6 for a pack of 100).

We chose zip ties in the first place because our drilled holes weren't exact, so the alignment between one tube and the next wasn't perfect. Therefore, the zip ties were necessary to cover up for our imprecise drilling. However, I would have preferred bolts because they would have been much stronger. I also shyed away from glue because it's expensive and an eye-skin irritant. Furthermore, I avoided glue because I wanted it to be mechanically connected. Glue seemed like a cop-out.

The zip ties made the whole thing "flexy." So when you sat in it, it would bend and give to your weight.

It wasn't very comfortable nor practical because of it's size, especially in the original incarnation:






As you can see, the original model was much longer, which obviously gave more back support, but its weight and size were annoying. We chopped off the back.




When you sat in it, it would bend and crackle, but hold up fine. For us skinny vegans, that is. Then one of our real-life-size friends came and sat in it. He leaned back, "ahhh..." and... Pop! The whole back fell off. After we all had a good laugh about it, I just put the whole thing — in two pieces — out on the curb. It was taking up too much room in the common area, and I was done with it. A day later, someone took it! I hope they had something creative in mind for it.

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