The New Hotness

With the seat glued and the old caster sockets yanked, I carved a piece of plywood to fit the gap in one leg:

Wood desk chair - leg filler - bottom — Wood desk chair – leg filler – bottom

After whittling the wood to kinda-sorta go in there, I pressed it against snippets of carbon paper (remember carbon paper?) to mark the contact points and carve them off:

Wood desk chair - leg filler - carbon paper fitting — Wood desk chair – leg filler – carbon paper fitting

This occupied most of a SquidWrench remote meeting, but eventually sank it flush with the leg:

Wood desk chair - leg filler - side — Wood desk chair – leg filler – side

Now, that’s not the prettiest job you’ve ever seen, but it gets worse:

Wood desk chair - leg epoxy shaping — Wood desk chair – leg epoxy shaping

This time around, I tinted the epoxy with brown and black dye, which knocked the color back to something tolerable and increased the curing time well beyond the usual couple of hours. Fortunately, I wasn’t in a hurry and it was pretty much done by the next afternoon.

Whereupon I mixed up another bodacious batch of epoxy:

Wood desk chair - caster pin prep — Wood desk chair – caster pin prep

The Kapton tape wrap kept (most of) the epoxy out of the end of the sockets. I buttered up the sockets just below their serrated heads and tapped them into the legs:

Wood desk chair - caster pin installed — Wood desk chair – caster pin installed

Yeah, I wiped that down a little better before another overnight cure left the four pins firmly secured in their legs; the pins still rotate (albeit stiffly) in the sockets, although the casters really swivel on their pins.

A cast iron fitting of the kind they just don’t make any more holds the legs in place:

Wood desk chair - bottom plate — Wood desk chair – bottom plate

My screw collection lacks chonky wood screws, but I doubt anybody will ever notice that shiny crosspoint screw.

In any event, the plate holds the legs in tapered slots along the cast iron base that also guides the height adjusting leadscrew under the seat:

Wood desk chair - leg wedge shims — Wood desk chair – leg wedge shims

The wood dovetails in the legs were a bit worn / shrunken, so I shimmed them with two strips of 3.5 mil = 0.09 mm stainless steel tape on each side and tapped the legs into place with a plastic mallet. The steel is completely invisible from outside and the legs are magically solid, just like they should be.

As expected, the new casters clash horribly with the chair’s classic style:

Wood desk chair - repaired — Wood desk chair – repaired

Somewhat to my surprise, it’s now undergoing a field test at Mary’s desk, where it replaces a chair she never liked. The seat adjusts down enough to let her feet reach the floor (which most modern chairs do not) and the edge doesn’t press on the back of her legs. We fiddled with the backrest height / angle / tension and it feels surprisingly good.

You gotta admire something with that kind of durability and repairability.

A good refinishing job would definitely improve its appearance, but that’s well beyond my abilities.

The New Hotness

Antique Desk Chair: Leg Rebuild