"The Chair" Meets "Big Iron"

“Big Iron”, that’s what we called it in the old days, when the world was made of wood and steel. It was commonly used as a descriptive of anything that was solid, heavy and made to last a very long time. It was sometimes used in relation to a need for something heavy duty. If you can close your eyes and imagine any one of the big yellow Caterpillar Tractor products you’re on the right track! 

This is what made America as we know it, bulldozers, locomotives, cranes and battleships. Nothing subtle about it. What does it have to do with me? Unbeknownst to most of you, I’ve been fighting a war……and losing. 

Some might remember a post of mine from last summer talking about an Aeron chair that I picked up on eBay for “a song”. It needed a gas cylinder and to be transported from Amarillo to Dallas. Those parts were pretty easy. My wife’s uncle was coming this way so the chair came with him. I got on line and ordered the proper gas cylinder for about $35, so when the chair arrived, I proceeded to take it apart, just like it showed on any number of YouTube videos. I don’t know whether the former owner was 500lbs or what, but that cylinder (or what was left of it wasn’t coming out). I went down to Lowe’s and bought what I thought was big iron in the form of a rather large pipe-wrench, but that got nowhere, even with the participation of two friends to hold the chair still. In the meantime, I managed to break part of the height adjustment mechanism as well.

 

And so it sat…..in parts…..in my garage…..for the next 5 months! Last month, I came up with the idea of having someone put a torch to it and see if that’d loosen it. Abject failure, combined with burned off paint as a reminder. 

About 1 week ago, I got another idea. I do quite of bit of computer work for a “mom & pop” business in an neighboring suburb called Mesquite (quaint for those of you who aren't from Texas). Since it's kind of a shoe-string operation, they can’t afford an actual IT guy or even to keep a firm on retainer. I was referred to them through a daughter-in-law who I had done work for, and so I’ve come to know them quite well. Their business is custom and small volume gasket manufacturing, mostly for industrial pumps, etc. It occurred to me that these guys work with actual “big iron” on a fairly regular basis, and they might know or have something that might help in my struggles with “the chair”. 

So yesterday, while we were “off” due to Martin Luther King Day, I loaded up “the chair” and went down to Dallas Gasket & Packing. We tried the pipe-wrench again with no success, we even tried it with the magic elixir (WD-40). Then while we were all standing around scratching our heads, one of the guys suggested trying the opposite tactic by clamping the stubborn cylinder in a vise and turning the chair. At first, that got us nowhere either. Then he brought out the “big iron” it was about a 10 foot steel tube with walls that were about 3/8” thick. We stuck it through the base of the chair and like magic (actually leverage), it began to turn. There was more, but to make a long story, shorter, we turned it back and forth while lifting to finally break the chair free of the cylinder post!

 

So, I returned home victorious, with “the chair”, now free of the offending appendage. I did have some of my own “big iron” work to do involving a 12lb sledge hammer so I could knock the last of the old cylinder from the chair base, but it’s pretty much ready now. As soon as that height adjustment part comes in, I’ll finally be in a chair that doesn’t have bolts poking me in the butt. Just goes to show you that: there’s always a price to be paid and sometimes, brute force IS the answer, so you turn to “big iron”.

Soon, I'll be able to sit in my "Captain's Chair", master of all the I survey, ready to go where no Frugal Propellerhead has gone before.