Special Projects - Barwa Chair LLC

Over the past few years, we’ve done a handful of custom, one-off projects for a number of people. These range in complexity from using custom fabrics to fabricating replacement frame parts. This post is meant to be a running list of projects to showcase some of the work we’ve done. If you need something “off menu” please reach out to us via our contact page.

Recacril fabric

Recacril is a similar acrylic fabric to what we use. The weave felt slightly lighter, but it works really well. We don’t mind making covers with different fabrics, but it’s quite a bit more expensive and takes longer given the shipping and additional time needed. What we don’t offer is customizing our pattern for different types of fabric, so buyer beware as your mileage may vary. Anyway, here’s an incredible backyard setup and the Barwas are covered in the same fabric used in the umbrellas. Also, this fabric is what caused us to start reinforcing grommets. We like it so much that we started reinforcing the grommets on every single cover we’ve made since.

Barwa Storage Cover

We spent about 5 months, on & off, designing a good storage cover for the chair. A lot of the work was done over Christmas break 2022. We really liked the fabric we used for this, but it getting it was a disaster. I want to say the first two shipments were either lost or never sent. Finally, months later, the guy drove ~3 hours to our house to deliver it himself. Ultimately, we were really happy how this turned out, but can’t produce them as it’s very labor intensive and the fabric is difficult to work with. We would have to price this extremely high and we still wouldn’t want to make them. …but I’m still glad we went through the process.

This is the final version in it’s happy home in California

This was us pinning the first attempt with an inexpensive muslin fabric.

This was the final muslin before we moved onto the final fabric.

Here’s the second attempt with the modified pattern.

This was our first attempt with the final fabric. We modified the pattern pieces quite a bit before making the final one.

Replacement legs

In the Summer of 2023, someone with a unique Barwa contacted us to make some replacement legs. This frame was anodized with a gold plating and had slots cut in the frame for straps instead of the traditional canvas cover. At the time, I had only made a single Barwa frame, and we were nowhere close to being ready to produce them. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do this, but I thought if I had the original legs I could get pretty close. This was also the only frame I’ve seen where the legs failed. This project helped give us the confidence that we can make legit Barwas that are as good as the original one.

The ones are almost a perfect match to the originals!

This is the best polishing job I’ve done. The only bad thing is I haven’t been able to replicate it since.

This is what we don’t want the bottom of the legs to look like

Here’s the owners chair. She has nice legs!

Barwa Arms or “Arm-wa”

This one is still in-progress. Over the years we’ve had a few requests for arms, but we haven’t been able to prioritize it. Over the summer of 2024, a Bartolucci asked if I could make one and he had some good ideas for the arm rest covers. I made two of them, and they both came out pretty well. This is the first frame piece that I was able to successfully figure out the angles and measurements for.

This is my first attempt next to my original arms

Here are the arms on a real Bartolucci owned Barwa. We had to play with the aluminum spacers a bit to get it to fit properly. Also the clearance is tight on the sides limiting the arm rest options.

The first attempt was *ugly* but I was really impressed with how well it “pressure fit” the tubing. If the design could improve we might not even need screws or holes in the tubing.

This is why 3d printing can be maddening!!

So far I like these as much as the original arm rests.

This is the final piece and is one of the first things we used our new punch to make the holes.

This is one one of our chairs are we started testing with a foam made for workout equipment. It’s works pretty well, but I’m not sure how well it would work outside.

I created a mock-up arm rest in FreeCAD to see if printing one would be viable.

My second design was much closer to the original arm rest cover. The printer bed limits the length and this one is about two inches shorter than the original.

I do wish the texture of the layers was smoother on this section. Hitting it with a heat gun does make it smooth enough for me.

Stay tuned on arms, we may offer these in 2026 if we can solve the arm rest cover in way that is comfortable and holds up well to the elements with outdoor use.

Frame pieces

‘U’ Bracket

We had a customer with a very interesting and rare set of chairs hit us up in the Fall of 2024. These frames used the smaller 1 inch tubing, but were built exactly like the older 1.25 inch chairs (wooden dowels, single ‘u’ bracket on the back legs). They was also steel and painted white. These were disassembled when he acquired them and only later he realized they were missing the ‘U’ bracket to connect the legs. At the time, neither of us realized the frames were steel, so we agreed an aluminum replacement part would work. It came out great and I believe the owner plans to powder coat them.

These are the two brackets straight off the bender. The first attempt was about .25″ too wide and had to be discarded

trimmed and ready for holes and polishing

Now both frames are up and running again!

1 thought on “Special Projects”

Barwa frames - recreations worthy of the original - Barwa Chair LLC
January 3, 2025

[…] making a new set of replacement legs for a customer in the summer of 2023, and the details on that project are here. Once these were finished in August, I continued chipping away on the many points of the process […]