A chair fitting
February 20, 2026
We have these old Ikea folding chairs. They were cheap and cheerful when I bought them about 20 years ago, but time and the sun have caused the plastic backs to start to fail. I’ve Frankensteined a crack that developed in the same place in each chair, and that fix has held up for a while, but the plastic is starting to go in between the holes holding that fix together. A new approach was required.
My wife suggested she could make a replacement fabric back, but that would require some kind of cross-brace to prevent the metal sides from just pulling in if one were to lean back. Aha! I thought, my lovely wife gave me a tubing bender for Christmas a couple years ago, and it’s been waiting for just such a project!
A quick trip to the hardware store for some 1/2 inch EMT, and a little CAD work to design a suitable fitting, and voila.
The fitting turned out to be rather a complicated little beastie. The arms of the chair the hold up the back are kind of oval, but are also crimped at the top. The EMT is nominally round, but after rolling it into a curve, it’s a little oval too; not so much that a round socket won’t work, though. The EMT cross-brace needs to come in to the fitting at about a 10 deg angle, so the two sides are mirror images. There are some small holes for pop-rivets to ensure nothing comes apart.
