CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

...and I notice these 'Video Recliners' in the local Tops Friendly Markets for sixty bucks a pop. They're ultrasuede, just things that sit on the floor so not real chairs. But I figure I could make bases for them and they'd work pretty well - they're actually remarkably comfortable and seem solid.

But the Tops only has like three of them, in different colors. So i figure I'll try to track down the distributor - the things might be useful for my motion simulators, too, particularly for flight simulation where you don't want a racing seat. So I find Far East Brokers and Consultants, and give 'em a holler.

I figured they'd have a minimum order or something. They do.

I'd have to order 6,750 seats. Group buy, anyone? Razz

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

**AnalogRocks**

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Even at fifty a piece they're over my budget by the time I mod them, as I'd really like 5 seats minimum.

So now I'm looking at completely DIY seats, been trolling around the fabric stores and lowes looking at foam, microsuede, and mdf. Looks like it should be doable.

Anybody have any info? Most DIY mass market seat stuff is about making cozies for your kitchen chairs... Razz

ecrabb · Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:35 pm Post subject:

Wow, good luck even DIYing chairs for much less than $50/ea. Just the MDF will cost upwards of $10-15 ea., and talk about a lot of work!

I was in the same boat you were a few years ago. The only dirt cheap thing I came up with was these really cool IKEA chairs. They were called the Oppala, and they were either $25 or $30 apiece. Of course, they're discontinued, now. Here's a photo, maybe it will give you some ideas:

One of the ways I love to be creative is using sh*t in an application for which it was not designed. For instance, conduit or PVC could be a chair frame. I built a really nice TV stand out of copper... which wouldn't be so economical these days. Anyway, conduit is cheap, and conduit bender is fairly inexpensive. You could whack out some frames like the Oppala pretty fast, but you'd have to engineer a fastener of some kind to link the pieces together. Could be fun.

Still, no matter how you do it, I think you're going to spend at least $30 apiece on some kind of frame, fabric, foam, thread, glue, screws/nails, etc. - that stuff adds up. A $50-60 "gaming" chair, or some recovered thrift chairs (sheets) or something may not be much more than DIY.

You might also want to look harder at starting with something else and modding it... say, outdoor deck chairs on clearance, chopped to be lower, with cushions or something. Have fun!

SC

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Even if I got the 50 buck seats I'd want to mod them as they're too low and unstable. So I'd hit 70 a piece easy, and if I'm gonna spend that much I think I can get close in function to the $600 'real' ht seats, as well as being able to make more later.

The trick is what things look like after I add up material costs. I'll post some sketches when I get a chance.