... and the chair is biting his leg

June 30, 2015 9:25 AM

Can anyone point me at some kind of reasonably nice office desk chair (style something like a Herman Miller / Aeron) that is mounted on a track on the floor, so that it can slide only 3ft to 4ft in a straight line?

For instance, something like this orange chair in a missile silo? Bonus: I'd like the chair to be free to spin around its vertical axis.

(If it helps: I've got two long desktop surfaces, and I'd like to put the chair between them, so that I can rotate to work on one desktop or the other, and also be able to slide the chair along the length of the desktops).

posted by doctor tough love to Shopping (4 answers total)

I think this is something you'd have to piece together, so e.g. you'd get something like this and then bolt the Herman Miller chair onto it.
posted by contraption at 9:43 AM on June 30, 2015

Another option that would allow for easy removal of the chair (and might have a cooler industrial look, not to mention being cheaper) would be to find a traditional wheeled chair with 4 casters and retrofit it with fixed-position v-groove wheels like these. You could then create a simple track by installing two parallel lengths of inverted-v sliding gate track with a wood stop at each end. Or you could fabricate your own track from hardwood, which might look better with your flooring and would help cut down on noise (metal wheels on a metal track can be irritating.)
posted by contraption at 10:01 AM on June 30, 2015

Sorry to keep chiming in, but it occurs to me that last idea would be a really bad one if the space with the chair will ever have children or pets in it, somebody could lose a finger or tail way too easily.
posted by contraption at 10:11 AM on June 30, 2015

Thanks! Good suggestions, both of them. (and FWIW, children / pets won't be an issue for me). It's interesting how some of this stuff is totally obvious if you know what it's called. "inverted-v sliding gate track" - of course! And - sliding chairs are often found on boats!

Again, thanks y'all!
posted by doctor tough love at 7:32 PM on June 30, 2015