HOW THEY WORK FOR IRON FURNITURE
It would seem that Iron Furniture just never wears out! Yea! The bad news is that the original glides wear out or fall out way too fast. Boooo! Your expensive floors or deck get damaged, and that is TERRIBLE. Enter Forever Glides. Instead of a thin, polyethylene cup just friction fitting inside the metal cup, Forever Glides have a thick, reinforced delrin body, coupled with dense neoprene foam and waterproof adhesive. Now the glides slide easily, don’t pop out, don’t wear out, and they actually flex a bit, so the entire glide surface contacts the floor surface, not just an edge. WOW! Instead of yearly replacement, you may never have to replace these glides again!
Believe it or not, classic wrought iron furniture has been made essentially the same for almost a century. Almost everyone is familiar with the classic, wrought iron leg ending at the floor with a down-turned metal cup. Inside this cup is usually another cup – a thin plastic one that faces up and gets driven into the confines of the down-turned metal cup. Well, simple enough for original installation, but not so good on durability. The thin, hollow polyethylene cups usually have a lifespan of about 1 season—sometimes less if the floor surface is abrasive, like concrete or stone.
In comes the best replacement glide in history: Forever Glides for Iron! The inventor actually worked for 24 years in a hardware store, and became exasperated at the number of people wanting a better replacement glide for their wrought iron furniture. After searching all the supply channels, and then doing patent searches, the engineering began.
Many prototypes and exhaustive testing led to the current design of Forever Glides for Iron. First of all, 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 they are designed 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.
Now, how about a design that doesn’t cave-in when weight is applied: that is how we engineered the Forever Glides replacement glides for iron furniture. They have a special reinforcement “webbing” molded into the extra-thick wear-surface that keeps them from caving in. We also made it many times thicker, for the obvious reason of longevity.
Since there are so many brands of iron furniture out there (and remember, that it’s been made for almost 100 years), and the manufacturers all have slight dimensional differences, even the drive-in, original style cups don’t fit into each other’s legs very well. Plus, all the banging, beating and nicking the furniture up during installation….not so good. Forever Glides for Iron replacement glides actually adhere to the top surface of the metal cup, so there are no longer friction-fit issues with different brands. This means if you are looking for replacement glides, all you need to know is the approximate (or nominal) size of the inside of your metal cups, and these WILL FIT. The two sizes are 1-1/4” diameter and 1-1/2” diameter, with the larger being much more common.
Back to the adhering to the top of the metal cup: This is where more design engineering came into play. 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 cup. Now for the very best part: The dense foam disc has a natural, self-leveling tendency at each leg! That means that slight manufacturer inaccuracy, or bent or miss-welded cups no longer posed a 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 chair move easier.
Very close to the beginning of Forever Glides, a few manufacturers saw what a good idea it was. So brands like O.W. Lee have used them for about 20 years virtually every chair and table they make! Catalogs like Improvements also got on the bandwagon early, and continue to sell them today. So conservative usage estimates are over 10 Million now!