Captain America Ball Chair Progress

Work continues with my Captain America ball chair project.  My first post on this project I pretty much had ironed out most of the major issues with the design and so I have shifted gears and moved on to the actual plans for building each individual section of the chair. This process is very similar to how I had built my three section kayak and my velomobile.  All of these projects have different issues to deal with concerning the designs and build.  The ball chair does not need to be moving down the road or be able to float in water.  Not that there are not some crazy ideas that could be included with this project but for now I am just sticking with the idea of a chair that will look pretty cool sitting in my house for starters.

 

The inner workings of the ball chair will be made up of four sections of rings.  The image above shows how they would look put together without any fiberglass skin on the outside of the ball.  Each ring will be bolted to the next using standard nuts and bolts so that it can be assembled and disassembled in the room of my choice and make it easier to move it through standard doorways without any problems.

 

This dome shaped section of the chair will be the back of the chair where the star would be painted on it.  It looks to be kind of complicated to make but when you look at it in pieces it is just a matter of lining up the parts and gluing them together.  All the pieces will be cut using either my bandsaw or my hot wire table.  The ribs in each section of the chair are all exactly the same.  So it's just a matter of duplicating each rib twelve times to make up whatever section I am working on.

 

This section of the chair is the number two ring.  Again it will be made of Styrofoam sheeting and then glued together.  Once that task has been completed an outer skin of Styrofoam strips will be glued into place to get the outer surface shaped the way I want it to be.  Again exactly like what I did when I built my velomobile.

 

 

Here's a view of the number one ring assembly.  It will be shaped only a little differently at the opening as there will be nothing bolted to that surface of this section.  Once all of the foam skin has been added to the ring section fiberglass will be added to the inner surfaces of the section.  This will make it much stiffer and make it simpler and stronger to sand the outer surface smooth for the glassing that will need to be done there.  Most of the inner Styrofoam will be removed after all the glassing has been completed as it will not be needed.  It is mainly there to get the shape I need for each section of the chair.

 

Here is a view of the four differently shaped but still similar ribs that will be used in each of the four sections.  I was able to create the exact shapes using Fusion 360 design software and from there created drawings of each individual piece so they could be cut on my bandsaw.  I will take a bit of time but nothing at this point in the build is really critical and so it just a matter of getting at it and marking everything and cutting, cutting and more cutting.

 

The large rings for each section of the chair will need to be cut a bit differently and I have a plan of action to handle that portion of the build as well.  I had a design for a mechanism that fits on to my hot wire table to make rings like the ones I need so I will have to track it down and let you know how that will come together in a later post.  This should also be interesting to put together for this project. So check in again as I will be posting more on this build in the coming weeks.  Have a good one.