The only thing I can find on line about this matter suggests drilling a hole in the leg and inserting the post of the caster, with its attendant locking cylinder. I’m afraid that the leg will split with the various forces - heavy sitter, dragging/rolling it across a thick carpet, etc. I have looked unsuccessfully for some type of metal sleeve that I can put on the end of the (tapered) legs of the chairs I’m concerned about, to keep the wood from splitting. Preferably, I’d use ball casters, thinking they would be easier on the legs. Regardless, I’m stumped as to how to do this now. Any suggestions from the dopers? (p.s. I’m passably competent but not great with projects like this and I don’t have a workshop or vises or lathes or all the tools that a lot of guys have. This is apartment living.)
I’m not a woodworker, and I too would want to use a sleeve, but I suspect they’re might hard to find for tapered legs. My thought would be to wrap mechanic’s wire tightly around the bottom two inches of the legs. Turns out even furniture people do that, although probably with somewhat thinner wire.
If you can get castors with long stems, this would help to distribute the force further up the leg of the chair and reduce the risk of splitting. (of course you’ll need to drill deeper holes).
If you can’t get long stem castors, you could get them with threaded stems, and add a bit of threaded tube, cut to length - to extend the stems.
I like the concept but I don’t think I have the requisite talent or tools to make that look good enough to pass management’s (Mrs. CC) eye-test. For starters, how do you get the wire tight to begin with and how do you keep the wire tight? What stops it from unraveling? Nah, this is beyond my actual as well as artistic capacity, nice as the idea is.
Use plastic cable ties. Women love those.
Kind of unrelated to the reinforcing of the leg discussion, but something else to consider: the castors will add height to the legs. So you will want measure the height of the castors, and then cut the legs before drilling.
I have to ask; why do this rather than obtain a chair designed for use with casters, and one that perhaps comes with the casters already installed?
And if this is a conventional non-swivel chair, how comfortable is it going to be to sit on, especially on the thick carpeting you mentioned?
I think you mean to ask why didn’t we buy that type of chair? Well, we didn’t. Nope, it’s an easy chair - two, actually - but they’re more awkward to lift and move than we had anticipated, hence my interest in making repositioning them easier. And they’re very comfortable, thank you.
If it’s simply a matter of moving them around, how about those plastic furniture sliders? They’s just discs that you put under each leg and reduce the friction.
An issue here is using the chair going to be a movable chair with a load present. If you’re thinking that folks, as they do, are going to be sliding around without getting up that presents a serious load not only to the base of the leg, but to the cushion rail-chair leg joint. If that joint is gusseted from inside then that’s a plus but rolling a loaded chair across a deep carpet is bound to present some serious loads.
If the chairs are only going to be moved without loads on them then you can get away with just about anything. But people are people and I see chair frame breakage in your future if that’s what happens.
I’ve tried those things. They either stick on, and don’t stay stuck, or they have to be screwed in and don’t work very well while at the same time possibly weakening the bottom of the leg. I don’t want that, either. Thanks.
Could you make a frame on casters that the chair could sit on while you move it?
What are the dimensions of the chair leg at the bottom, where you plan to add the casters? There are some that attach with a flat plate and they might work better. But in general, I don’t think this will be easy to accomplish.
The legs taper to about < 1" so the plate attachment won’t work either. I may be able to get someone to fashion some tapering metal sleeves that I could use with the post-insertion type of caster. I’ll also check with some furniture repair guys.
It sounds like you’re thinking of leg tips like this or this.
I thought Dewey was talking about sliders like this. They don’t attach to anything, they’re simply placed under the legs like so, and they make sliding the piece quite easy. Really easy.
They can be left in place if desired, which will make the dents in the carper shallower (more likely to recover) though somewhat wider. They may or may not be visible if left there, depending on the size of the slider and the amount of overhang from the furniture. Or they can be used only for moving the piece and then put away until next time. Google on furniture sliders.
I think these will work orders of magnitude better than casters for moving a chair across a carpet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the casters didn’t even roll.
ETA: They also work for moving furniture across hard surfaces. They allow easy sliding without gouging the floor, which is much easier than lifting.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking of.
One more idea; you can probably replace the entire chair leg. In my experience, they screw into the chair frame. They even sell replacement chair legs, if you want to change the style.
These don’t require either, and can be purchased for hard or carpeted surfaces. If the chair is heavy enough, it won’t slip off of them. We have them under the legs of a day bed and one aging person can move the whole bed alone.
Figured this was tongue in cheek, but have to observe that cable ties will slide right down the taper and leave a nice display of plastic circles on the floor.
If you want to test this, push the chair on its back and try turning one of the chair legs counterclockwise. If I’m correct, you’ll be able to unscrew the entire leg. You can then replace the leg with one with built-in casters (such as this) or replace the chair legs with casters with a 5/16-18 threaded stem (such as this one) that would screw into the chair frame.