HOW FOREVER GLIDES FOR CAST WORK
Now imagine these lovely and fairly expensive sets of furniture sitting on your kitchen floor or outside deck, and you start to move them around. Virtually with any movement – in or out – your motion causes one or more of the screw-in levelers to come unthreaded, or partially re-thread. So in no time, this fine furniture has a bothersome wobble. Usually in short order, unthreaded glides litter themselves around the furniture, to be kicked around on the floor. Now, you have to frequently turn the chairs over and put the glides back in, attempt to get each one level, only for the cycle to begin again. Below you can read a little more detail about how we have developed Forever Glides and the materials we use.
The third variation of Forever Glides was developed for cast aluminum and cast iron furniture. The cast furniture rage really began with small, 3 piece tea sets made from cast iron, imported from China. They became famously popular, but proved too heavy to move easily. So aluminum became the logical alternative. The designers have had a hay-day from that point, and it continues today. In the casual furniture industry, cast furniture is the #1 selling product sector, outselling wrought iron and wood. To be honest, many of the casual furniture dealers that had enjoyed the benefits of Forever Glides for Iron and Wood, insisted that we solve the glide issues that were inherent with all cast aluminum furniture. Because of the slightly imperfect nature of casting, all this beautiful furniture had to have screw-in levelers on each leg.
Of course, all the manufacturers use different threads, metric and American for these threaded glides. It wouldn’t be practical to include all the different sizes of screws needed with each package of replacement glides…not to mention that the screwing in and out was the primary problem! So we tested and concluded that by using 2 sizes of industrial, push-fit fasteners, we could replace virtually all the screw-in levelers in use. These barbed, tapered nylon fasteners are widely used in industry today. In fact, a large part of your car is held together with them! So by attaching the Forever Glide cup with one of these, we virtually eliminated the un-threading problem. The commercial neoprene foam disc under each glide automatically compensates for the slight casting imperfections. The space-age delrin® of the glide body wears indefinitely and allows for smooth, easy movement.
Lets back up a bit and talk about the plastic: Many prototypes and exhaustive testing led to the current plastic used in all Forever Glides. They are made of a special, high-grade acetyl resin, commonly known as delrin® (Dupont’s trademark). Replacement glides generally aren’t made of such a high strength plastic, because the manufacturers want them to wear out! Delrin® is so durable, when it was designed, the developers at Dupont believed it would actually replace steel! What they also discovered was that it had remarkable properties of slickness. Ah-Ha! – a super-durable plastic that also has slick properties. So we decide to do the proverbial over-kill and use it for the plastic in our replacement glides.
Next, a bit about the foam disc. We discovered that by using special, high-density foam (similar to scuba diver wet-suit foam), and putting high-strength water-proof adhesive on both sides, we had the perfect “coupling” between the glide and chair. As described earlier, the dense foam disc has a natural, self-leveling tendency at each leg. That means that slight manufacturer inaccuracies, not to mention the usual angle of the leg, no longer posed a wobble problem. When the weight of the chair and its occupant press against the foam and glide combo, the whole surface of the glides can evenly slide on the floor. Obviously, if an entire surface, compared to one edge, can take the wear—everything lasts a lot longer. And don’t forget, the slick and durable delrin® makes even the heaviest chairs or furniture move easier.
Just like for the Forever Glides for Wood, for everything to really work great, we still need the insert cup. With the years of experience with the Forever Glides for Iron, we knew that the weld-cup on iron furniture kept the glide-and-foam assembly from “shearing” from the leg bottom. If just the glide-and-foam was pressed on the bottom of cast legs, with continued or severe use, the glides could get knocked off. Plus, with the porosity of cast aluminum, the adhesive could get wicked away in time and fail, just like other adhesive pads, carpet or even plastic stick-on glides.
So a miniature replica of the iron cup was created out of plastic. This insert cup is affixed to the bottom of the chair leg with the push-fit fastener, and then the glide-and-foam is pressed up into it. Now you have virtually the ideal replacement glide. So, by adding an insert cup to the already proven Forever Glides for Iron principle, a great new glide for cast furniture was born.
Forever Glides for Iron furniture have been in severe, daily, commercial use for over 20 years now. Many renowned furniture manufacturers use these glides as original equipment on their new furniture. In fact, over 10 million have been used on iron furniture alone. Many manufacturers of wood furniture are starting to use the Forever Glides for Wood, as well. Now, the Forever Glides for Cast are beginning to change the scene of cast aluminum furniture. One hotel in Florida has installed over 10,000! The great news is that you can buy them today and put them on your furniture in a matter of minutes. Sizes are 1”and 1-1/4” round, with colors being black and bronze. Check out where you can purchase the glides now!