So I have this table and chair set that was given to me from my parents. The set must be getting on 30 or more years and unfortunately the chairs have a design flaw: the base of the chair is thick particle board that has weakened over time, and the rear of the chair is fixed to the bottom of the chair seat, which then attaches to the chair base. If someone leans back too hard, the particle board base of the chair breaks.
(Apparently they also didn’t try too hard to center the seat, either)
So the sensible thing to do would be to get a new table and chair set for a few hundred dollars, but I am not a sensible person instead I figured this would be a good learning project … that just happened to require several thousand dollars worth of machines and a few years to finish it… Well I suppose it’s not like we’ve been allowed to have guests for the last couple of years anyway.
So what I wanted to do was essentially weld in some square tubing to the back seat frame, which would then be bolted to the chair base, ensuring that the seat itself only takes the load of sitting on it. As the chair frame was circular tube, I would need to cope the square tube ends.
Luckily I had a milling machine, so I could cope with this.
You might even say it is my coping mechanism.
The tubes are coping nicely, but what this photo does not show you is the several failed attempts beforehand. I don’t like to just get it right the first time, I prefer to mess it up a few times as a “learning experience”
Even so, I am slowly convincing myself that modelling things in CAD first is a good idea, even if after doing so I messed up how far I needed to translate the tubes when performing the coping.
The welding actually went reasonably well, although I didn’t try to weld on the sides. Honestly I think the house will now break before this chair does anyway.
Thanks for reading :)