How to Make a Rocking Chair for the Garden With a Pallet Easy and Simple

I made this rocking chair because I always wanted to have a chair like this but it was never bought because of its very high price, besides in the summer it is very comfortable to stay in the shade of the tree to read or relax.

As I am not a carpenter my goal is to do something simple and quick with tools that everyone has at home like a hammer, saw and nails. And that's what I'm going to teach you to do today.

The materials needed are:

• Wooden pallet
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• A few meters of sturdy rope
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• Saw
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• Hammer
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• Some Nails
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• Measuring tape (optional)
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• Sandpaper (optional)

The first thing to do is go buy a pallet or go get it from a place they give you.

As I know a place that are free, I went there to get them, although they are used, they are in very good condition.

You can see companies in your region that give them away.

If you prefer you can buy a new one, it's not too expensive but if it's free you always save something.

The advantage of the new ones is that the wood as it is new is more "beautiful" and it is easier to remove the nails.

The pallet I used had 9 boards so I cut it in half on one side with 4 and on the other 5 boards as you can see in photo 7.

The measurements of the pallet I used are in the photos 8/9

With the pallet cut in half, you have to remove the boards from the pallet from the part that will be used as a backrest, in order to use them as armrests and fixing the backrest.

I recommend you use two hammers to make the task easier.

You can see in photos 3/4/5 how I took the boards.

The first two photos show the different combinations of the backrest, it can be a low backrest with a larger seating area or a higher backrest and less seating area. In my case, I opted for the second option because it seemed better.

With the boards that we removed from the previous step, we are going to make the armrest and the backrest.

To make the part that the arm rests on, you have to measure the width of the seat (photo 1) and cut two boards with this measurement.

Then it is necessary to cut two other boards to support the other boards (photo 5/6) with the measurement of the height that the board supporting the arm is. It may seem a bit confusing but from the pictures you understand what I'm saying.

Finally, you need to cut 4 small boards to support the backrest (photos 7/8/9) I would recommend about 20cm / 8 inch

Now you have to nail the boards that were cut in the previous step , from photos 1 to 5 you have to nail the backrest and from photo 5 to nail the armrest .

I recommend using at least 4 nails in each joint to make it very strong.

This step is optional but sanding the corners gives a much better finish as you can see in photo 1 .

To start I sanded with "40" sandpaper (photos 2/3) and the finishes with "320" sandpaper (photos 4/5).

The first sandpaper I thought was a little too thick so in the end I used a finer one but you can just use an intermediate sandpaper.

If you want you can also use some kind of chemical product such as varnish, termite product or wood oil but I didn't use any product because the pallet itself already had a termite product and besides that I didn't want to spend more money because of that kind of products are quite expensive.

You can install the rocking chair on a support or a tree as long as it is sturdy.

If you are going to install it on a tree the first thing you have to do is find a good branch that is thick, straight and relatively long. The branch I'm going to use is the one in the first photo.

Wake up you have to go under the seat tying a knot at approximately half the height.

The higher the knot, the more stable the swing, if it is low, it is more unstable.

To prevent the rope from slipping under the seat, you can fasten the rope with a nail, starting to hammer in a part and then bending it (photo 3).

Now it's ready and you can rest in your rocking chair, but you don't have to stay there, with pallets you can do 1001 things from simple projects to complex constructions, for example I did it with a trailer (photo 5) and a chicken coop with just pallets . You just need to have imagination.

As this will be used mainly by children I left the swing low, but if you want you can make it higher.

I hope you enjoyed.

Thank you and see you next time