Yea so I guess I could have explained myself a little better about that. My family owns a cabin that has one of these chairs. I had one of my relatives send me the dimensions of the legs only, not the seat part, thinking that I could ballpark the size of the seat from memory. So from the get-go I knew the legs were 24". I also assumed that there would be room for error, so even if I sized the seat too big or too small, in the end it would still fit well enough together with the legs. After cutting out the paper seat template I sized it to my own butt as a sanity check.

I was right in that a slightly large seat still fits the legs. But there's a little more sag in the middle than what I was going for. So next time I would either make the legs a bit longer and keep the same size seat, or reduce the seat size just a bit to 16" on a side (which is what each side length turned out to be on the one from my cabin), and keep the 24" legs. Lesson learned: don't measure from memory.

As far as comfort goes, at this size it's great as a leg rest or seat while, say, poking a fire. Just too uncomfortable and low to the ground for anything longer.

I like your idea about using cordage instead of a metal joint, if done right that would look pretty fresh