Office Chair Repair

May 15, 2007 9:33 AM

How best to reattach the back of an office chair?

There's a T bar connected to the seat bottom (pictured here) which is where the back of the seat (pictured here) used to attach. I added the white loops thinking they could slide onto the T bar, but the loops are placed wider than the arms of the T bar. Putting a wooden dowel through the loops secured the seat back from falling off, but the dowel snapped as soon as I leaned back. I would try a metal dowel instead, but the problem with a dowel is that it can still slide around horizontally and come out of the loops.

Is there a piece of hardware, or some combination of pieces, that I could use to secure the seat back?

posted by hoppytoad to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

I had almost exactly the same chair until recently, when one of the legs broke (yeah, the legs that the wheels attach to).

I know from past experience that these things are unfixable which is why I bought a new chair. I don't think you're going to be able to fix yours either.

There's a surprising amount of force involved in sitting on a chair, as you found when you leaned back, and it's hard to engineer around this.
posted by humblepigeon at 9:43 AM on May 15, 2007

Screw two small pipe clamps into the back of the chair while someone hold the back in place for you. The clamps should be small enough to hold the T tightly and can usually be found at your local hardware store. If they don't have those, they'll have something similar.

Example (also, metals ones are available).
posted by IronLizard at 12:34 PM on May 15, 2007

Response by poster: I should probably get a new chair, but I'm going to give the pipe clamps a try and hope that if I fix it then legs won't break next. Then I really will need a new chair.

Thank you both for helping.
posted by hoppytoad at 8:16 PM on May 15, 2007