Thursday, August 03, 2006

Adventures In Home Improvement (8/3/2006)

Screwing a Chair
My home office chair just decided to up and nearly deposit me on the floor backward last week. I thought it was just the reclining lever that popped out without my permission again. But instead of nearly depositing me on the floor directly backward, this was a bit different. I nearly fell over my left shoulder. Closer inspection revealed that one of the screws in the arm of the chair--which coincidentally was about 1/4 of the support of the chair's back--had been shorn. It was broken. Screwed, as it were.

I figured I had put it off too long today, and went to the hardware store, broken screw in-hand. Rather, the part of the broken screw that wasn't still screwed into the...well, screw hole.

I found a nut that went onto the screw nicely and figured I'd found the correct threading for the screw, and using the nut chose out two nice shiny new bolts of differing lengths (I wasn't sure if the original had been 1" or 3/4") and of course the nut, just in case.

Back in the office I drilled out the bolt that remained in the chair. I did what I could to make the hole a bit oblong so I could get a flat-head screwdriver into it and remove it without chancing drilling out the screw-hole's threading.

Aside: I know "screw-hole's" not the right word, but 1) I don't know what that right word is, and 2) I'm amused by the word "screw-hole". It accurately describes where the screw belongs, and can have many other amusing connotations.

Anyway I successfully removed the 3/16" piece of screw left in the chair with a screwdriver stuck rather awkwardly in the hole I'd just drilled. Woohoo! Something I thought of worked!

Feeling rather smug and a bit excited that this might be the one home improvement (can this really be called "home improvement"?) task I did right start to finish. Apparently I'm either very non-observant of my past experiences, or I'm just really quite optimistic. You see, the bolt I'd gotten to replace the screw was not threaded correctly.

Now who would have thought that two bolts that can take the same nut wouldn't be the same thread? So, a bit puzzled, I put the nut back on the original, broken screw. This time I put it down all the way. Well, I attempted to put it down all the way. It siezed up not even 1/4 of the way down the screw. Apparently if you're going to use a nut to guage threading equivalencies between bolts, you must put the nut all the way to the head of the bolt in order to really guage it. But really...if you must do that...don't.

Of course I was a bit...annoyed, though the state of the house and the behavior of all its residents kept me with a nice cool head (and incidentally, the only cool head in the house). (I have this need to be opposite everyone else I'm with. You're mad? Well, look at how cool I am. You're scared? Well, see how brave I'm being? You're being brave? Oh my gosh--we're all gonna DIE!) A few moments' thought and I had the solution.

See, the original screw had apparent sheared off only 1/8" down its length. It's a 3/4" screw. And the distance between the piece of the arm rest that is used to fasten down the arm rest is perhaps 1/16"...I thought I could most likely just use the broken screw, since I was still working with a screw that was...um...let's see...carry the 4...5/8" long, giving me 9/16" to work with.

Short solution: I took a long screw out of a part of the arm-rest that was okay and replaced it with the short screw, considering that part of the arm rest doesn't have to deal with my not unimpressive bulk flouncing back to the back rest. I took the longer screw and put it into the hole wherein the broken screw was once a hair ball in the drain of...the...thing. (I'm not so good with similes.)

I tightened everything and voila! (or whatever the French word is for voila!) we have a chair that is once again functional.

By the way, if ever you buy an office chair from RCWilley for a nice, discounted price...be sure to check the screw tightness often. For your safety.

Epilogue
The useless bolts and nut I bought are living in a nice, snug bucket of homeless screws, bolts, nuts and other fascinating hardware...mostly presumably fasteners of some sort.

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