Metal Chair repair

is there any way to drill a new hole for a new bolt.

If you've got a whole lot of time and patience you could probably pick away at it with a carbide burr in a Dremel and get it and the extractor out that way. You might have to retap for the next larger fastener or Helicoil the hole to get the original thread size back again if you remove too much of the original hole threads.

If the whole arm is metal, and you can remove it from the rest of the chair you could try and find a cooperative machine shop with EDM capability and have them "burn it out".

Knowing what a great gang of guys inhabit this newsgroup, I'd hazard a guess that someone would be willing to have a go at doing that for you gratis if you'd stand the shipping costs.

Jeff

"handysmurf" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

1. Use a smaller-diameter carbide masonery bit to drill a pilot hole in the extractor.
2. Use a sheetmetal screw to unscrew the extractor.

1. Use a new extractor to remove the bolt.

Greetings Jeff, That's a good idea! Easyouts are as hard-and as brittle-as glass. Removing one of them without the proper tools is a huge pain in the butt. I will now volunteer to repair the part for free. But the shipping needs to be paid both ways. Eric R Snow, E T Precision Machine

Thank you very much but shipping would be prohibitive. The whole base and arms are welded to make one piece. So the size alone would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 4' cube.

Sounds like my best option at this point is to drill it out and tap a larger hole....

the extractor itself is only about 3/16" so no drilling a pilot hole ... lol

"handysmurf" wrote: Any Ideas folks?? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Do you have access to an acetylene torch? I would heat it red hot, and then cool it slowly, to anneal it. Then it ought to be soft enough to drill. Or blast it with a cutting torch, and then weld in a new threaded sleeve of some sort (something like a coupler nut.)

"handysmurf" wrote: Thank you very much but shipping would be prohibitive. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Why don't you give your location--a helpful person with the right equipment may not be too far away.

If you do get the bolt out without damaging the thread, you might want to replace the bolt with a high tensile bolt to reduce the chance of the failure occuring again.

Chris

The extractor is too hard to drill except with carbide.

It sounds as though you can get to to the other end of the bolt. If so, drill the bolt until you hit the extractor, then knock it out with a pin punch. Then you can drill larger until you hit threads, or try the trick with the jewelers saw. It will be slow, but should work.

John Martin

Have you ever tried to drill hardened steel with a masonery bit?

Have you ever tried to do this freehand on a char handle?

If you have deilled a hole in a piece of hardened steel were you ever sucessfull in using a sheet metal screw to grab in a hole drilled into a chunk of hardened steel?

How may extractors are you going to sacrifice before you go to plan "B"?

Yep!

It worked well for what I needed it for.

Not exactly a "precision" bit, but CHEAP!

Dunno about "chars", but if the OP was able to drill the bolt freehand, drilling the extractor won't be any more difficult.

Slower, perhaps, but no more difficult.

All that is needed is for the taper of the sheetmetal screw to enable it to jam against the side wall of the drilled hole.

The purpose of the sheetmetal screw is to be an extractor extractor.

In which case, use the carbide bit [they're available in that size] to drill out the extractor.