Square chair glides

[Gerry Kaslowski]

I'm finishing up a couple of adirondack chairs, a small for my grandson and an adult size for my son. They are both made from pine. I've been trying to figure out what to put on the bottom of the legs to protect them. Metal would be OK for grass and dirt, but not for a nice deck. I was thinking of something like plastic or Teflon, but should I fasten it with some deeply countersunk screws?

[Steve Friedman]

I'm a novice, but am in the middle of building some adirondack chairs and rockers out of cypress. After researching this to death, I think the most important protection for the entire legs would be a couple of coats of Smith's Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (CPES) to make them rot resistant. In fact, if the chairs are being left outside all year, I would CPES the whole chair,especially since you are suing pine.

As for affixing something to the bottoms, it's pretty much a question of how you want it to look. I bought some IPE for mine since it's wood and pretty indestructible. It's expensive, but you don't need much. I know some people use plastic, which is fine if you're OK with the look. I would use some marine epoxy to attach the bottom strips. Also, to add long grain gluing surface, I would actually cut a shallow mortise into the bottoms of the legs. For example, if you're using 3/4 stock for the bottom strips, I would let only 1/4" of the strip extend below the bottom of the chair leg and let the remaining 1/2" of thickness sit inside the mortise.

As for screws, I'm not sure screwing into end grain will add much shearing strength to keep the bottom strip in place when when someone tries to scoot their chair across the deck while still sitting in it. Also, you don't want rust stains on your deck, but stainless or brass screws don't have the shearing strength of regular screws. If it makes you feel better, you could use a couple of countersunk exterior coated screws to secure it, but I'm not sure how much that adds.

Just make sure whatever you use is easily replaceable when it rots or wears out.

Good luck.

Steve

[Bill Huber]

I bought two nail chair glides from Woodcraft or Rockler, don't remember which and put 2 of them on each leg. This has worked out fine, it keeps the water from wicking up the leg and it also helps them slide.

[Jerome Hanby]

How about some of that super tough slick plastic (ultra high molecular weight something or other). You could use a thicker piece of that and route out a recess for the chair leg tips to sit in...