Tambour Sun Lounge

Managed to finish off the Tambour Sun Lounge this evening – went together surprisingly quickly in the end.

It is made up of 137 individual, interlocked tambour slats, produced using the Lonnie Bird Tambour Router Bit Set from Toolstoday.com.  I made quite a few more than I needed, as I wasn’t sure how many I’d break testing the load limits, or, when I started the project, just how long a tambour I’d end up requiring.  The slats I have left over can be turned into a small drinks table, and/or a lumbar support.

I’ve now made over 300 tambour slats with this set, and it is still going strong.  This project uses approx 90 meters of slats, so if you work that out – 2 passes with one of the router bits, and one with the other, that is 270m of routing, and about the same distance again on the tablesaw, not to mention multiple passes on the jointer and thicknesser.  All in one day – over a km of timber passed through one machine or another.  I slept well that night!

I made the slats about as thick as I could manage, and still be able to slot them together.  Granted, it would be possible to go even thicker if you were prepared to make the slot on the bottom of the slat wider.  However, I tested this tambour by standing on it, on one foot.  That it survived that torture test (just) demonstrates just how strong they are (and the timber obviously).

So that’s it – job done.  The full step by step writeup will be in the next edition of “The Shed” magazine.  If you haven’t seen it yet (available in Australia and NZ, and I imagine digitally elsewhere), it is worth checking out.