How-To: Turn an Old Tractor Seat into a Great Shop Chair
By Chuck CageThe Build
You’ll want to start by removing and discarding all the junk parts of the chair. Ours came off pretty easily with just four bolts. Next, we measured and cut our two pieces of 1″ square tube.
Specifically, we cut them to 11″ so we could close up the ends using the tabbing technique we described in “tricks of the trade” on page 2 of the game chair post.
Once we had the ends closed up, we laid them on the chair mount and measured the cross distance, which came out to exactly 7-1/2″. We then measured and cut the bar stock to make the crossmember on which the seat would mount.
We laid the crossmember on top of the 1″ tubes on the seat and tacked it into place, assuring that there would be room to drill a hole for the seat mount bolt in a place where the bolt wouldn’t contact the button/lever assembly.
We then measured and marked the spot where we wanted the seat bolt to mount, center punched the spot to make sure the drill didn’t wander, and drilled the 1/2″ hole.
After a quick test fit of everything, we finish-welded the outside and inside of the plate/tubing seam. Then we turned the whole assembly upside down on the bench and plug-welded our mount to the chair.
Since some of the mount would be visible after the seat was mounted, we took a few minutes to mask off the chair with some newspaper, and we primed and painted the mount assembly black to match the seat we found.
All that’s left is to let it dry and bolt the seat on. Read on to page 3 to see our finished chair.
June 30th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
[...] How-To: Turn an Old Tractor Seat into a Great Shop Chair We put the chocolate of an old tractor seat with the peanut butter of a broken office chair to make a slick little roll-around for the shop. Follow our instructions to build your own. [...]
June 30th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
This is the second project with the wirewelder that i’ve seen on toolmonger. If I had a better workshop area to store it in and work on projects I probably would have picked one up already. Keep the great articles coming!
July 31st, 2006 at 9:16 am
incredible!
August 15th, 2006 at 8:50 am
I’m a little late to this, but I’m new to the site and just had to say how much I love this project! I’m a huge fan of old tractors and this would be perfect for my barn/shop/garage. Thank you for this!
September 17th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
[...] Or maybe you could turn that old tractor or lawnmower seat you’ve got laying around into a sweet shop chair. We’ve got two of ‘em in the Toolmonger shop now. [...]
May 30th, 2007 at 11:13 am
[...] Welding is a skill that’s incredibly useful and a lot of fun, too. We’ve written quite a bit about it — including a few projects you might want to try — but today I ran across a great “getting started” guide from the people over at Custom Classic Trucks. Like us, they’re enamoured with the MIG/wire process, which is way, way easier than stick welding. So if you’ve tried stick welding and hated it, you might want to give wire welding a chance. Try it — you’ll like it! [...]
June 27th, 2007 at 11:34 am
[...] Since we were tired of standing (and kneeling and squatting) around the shop – and we had a few tractor seats and broken office chairs lying around — we welded ‘em up into some quick (and awesome) shop chairs, then posted a how-to to help you do the same. [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 9:46 am
[...] If you have an old tractor seat or lawn-mower seat lying around (or you could put a wanted ad on Freecycle, I’ve acquired an old tractor tyre in this way to make a sandpit for my young daughter) and a broken office chair, you can make this really cool tractor seat swivel chair. Full instructions here. I once bought one of these (with a flimsy plastic seat) from Ikea for my son and was charged a whopping great £19.99. You can make this project for nothing. But even if you resort to buying a tractor seat at a car boot sale or similar, it’ll still be a whole lot cheaper, and more unique, than shelling out for the plastic manufactured alternative (and of course there’s always the karma that comes from keeping stuff out of landfill - priceless). [...]
February 10th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
You also could buy a fancy store bought one like at http://www.denlorstools.com/ but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun!
September 16th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
This is a really great Eco idea, especially for old tractor enthusiasts. I have the top of a broken Windsor arm chair fixed onto a broken office chair base that I use at my shop desk, but these look like much more fun.