In my search for free woodworking plans, today I tackle the Z Chair. I will be scouring the internet so that you don’t have to 🙂 As with any free woodworking plan, it will be interesting to see what type of quality we can find…..
What is a Z-Chair?
When we are talking about a Z-Chair, we are talking about the Selig Z-Chair first imagined by Poul Jensen in Denmark in the 1950’s.
This low slung lounge chair has become a design classic. I am sure you will know what I mean as soon as you see one. As an avid woodworker, if you have never thought of making a Z-Chair, you will be seriously tempted to after reading this article 🙂 As you can see below, a quick Google search for Selig Z-Chair will give you a glimpse of this beauty 🙂
Internet Based FREE Selig Z-Chair Woodworking Plans
As usual on these woodwork plan pilgrimages, I will start by looking at the good old internet and then follow that with a YouTube search later on. Can we find any decent free Z-Chair woodworking plans for free? Will Poul Jensen approve? Let’s find out 🙂
At the time of writing, a simple Google search will throw up a forum post by BMac on the Woodwork Talk Forum as the first result. I have to say that I have seen many forum posts in my time, but not many are as helpful and detailed as this one. I would like to officially thank BMac (whoever you are) for your insightful and detailed post. Although BMac doesn’t give actual plans, if you read the whole thread you will see a detailed journey about how he made his own set of Selig Z-Chairs (which look awesome by the way!!). This is what I love about the woodworking community, the amount of people that will take their own time to post such things.
Although BMac doesn’t give plans, he points us to two locations that he used as inspiration, a post by North End Workbench and another by LumberJocks. These are very helpful, especially the first one, which gives you at least some rough hand drawn plans to follow. Yay, actual template and measurement ideas!! If you piece together the info from BMac’s forum post and these two additional posts, you should get enough information to make your own Z-Chair. Although this is more aimed at the intermediate to expert woodworker. If you are a novice, you may struggle to follow along.
I have to say that this search is off to a great start thanks to BMac and the Woodwork Talk forum. And after some extensive searching, it’s a good job it exists! As there really isn’t much more to find out there. I managed to find an Imgur posting of several photos showing the process someone went through to make a Z-Chair, but that was about it!
And people are really desperate out there for Z-Chair plans, it seems. I came across multiple forum postings of people asking for Z-Chair plans and even a Pinterest pin doing the same! Crazy! Let’s hope my YouTube search bears some fruit!
YouTube Search for Selig Z-Chair FREE Woodworking Plans
At first, I have to say I thought I had hit a roadblock straight away with YouTube. This is simply because, for some reason, no one is using terms such as ‘Selig’ ‘Poul Jensen’ or “Z-chair’ in their video titles. But with a little more digging, I can find some examples which are just labeled as ‘modern wooden chairs’. I have no idea why 🙂 Anyway, at least something exists 🙂
The first guy Mortgage & Mitre didn’t even realize he was making a Z-Chair 🙂 He was taking part in a plywood woodworking challenge and searched for modern chairs as design inspiration and landed on a Z-Chair (they really are THAT beautiful!). Although there is no plan as such included alongside this video, it is a pretty detailed walkthrough video of how this chair was made. Still pretty helpful if you combine it with all the other information I have found so far in this article. See this video below:
Next up we have the YouTube channel Spencley Design Co., who has made a video about their ‘modern wooden chair’. Although this video talks about them coming up with their own design after being inspired by other chair designs, what they landed on is pretty similar to the Poul Jensen Z-Chair, although not technically exact.
The benefit here is that alongside the detailed YouTube video walkthrough, there are also plans you can download for free from the accompanying blogpost on the Spencley blog. With both of these things, you can get all the information you need in one place to make something very Z-Chair like. Although previous plans talked about earlier in this article are more faithful to the original Z-Chair, this is the option I would choose if I was a novice woodworker. Simply because the provided plans will walk you through everything you need to get your ‘modern chair’ done and dusted. Granted, they are not the most detailed plans I have ever seen, but they are the most detailed I have found during this article 🙂 Watch Spencley’s video below:
So there you have it, woodworking folks. My definitive guide for Z-Chair plans you can find for free online through the wonders of YouTube and Google! This is not the best search I have undertaken, but it is not anywhere near the worse. There is enough free information out there for any self-respecting woodworker to use to make their own Z-Chair to make Danish design masters such as Poul Jensen proud 🙂
This Z-Chair plan search is yet another reminder as to why I like to buy packs of plans for my personal woodworking projects! It took a good hour or so of reading through blog and forum posts and watching YouTube videos to get the information needed for these plans. And even then you end up with a bit of a fragmented mess. The pack I usually use has literally thousands of woodworking plans in one place, so no need to go searching like this anymore. Click HERE to go view my recommended woodworking plans pack for yourself. I would rather be sipping a beer and relaxing than searching for woodworking plans after all!