Replace Castors on Swivel Chair

When you buy swivel chairs for your home office, they invariably come with castors. In practice, castors on hard floors ruin the surface and castors on carpets dig into the carpet and when you move the chair, weakens the structure of the carpet.

The reason for this is simply down to surface area. The surface area of such castors is small, so the resolution is to greatly increase the surface area in order to eliminate the problem. The difference in the surface area your weight and that of the chair, is considerably larger.

This method allows you to move the chair easily and also remove the parts if required.

This is the result - the following pages give a step-by-step guide to making this.

5x MDF circles 18mm thick, 150mm diameter; which you can get on ebay.

1x 12mm diameter rod, 300mm long; which you can get on ebay.

5x screws around 30mm long.

Screwdriver, craft knife, ruler, Dremel/drill and 1 drill bit slightly smaller in diameter than screws used; piece of paper, pencil.

Time project takes - about 1.5 hours

Approximate cost - about £19, although you can do this for next to nothing if you want to cut your own wood scraps.

The castors just pull out easily.

These are two components, the base and the shaft (rods). The rod needs to be 11mm diameter, so I got 12mm and just used a craft knife to reduce the size so the rods insert snugly into the chair. I got a 12mm diameter rod, 30mm long, and cut 10 pieces of 3cm long. Then, used my Dremel to bore a hole slightly smaller than the size of the screw I will be using.

I got the bases from ebay, pre-cut; MDF circles 18mm thick.

Used a piece of card to mark out the center, then drilled a hole in the middle of the bases and then moved the drill bit over to make the top recessed to take the screw

Screw the parts together ensuring the rod is straight against the base.

Pop the units into place. Job done.