When I was studying at the MacPhail Center, I showed up to class and someone had taken the piano bench out of our studio. Rather than hunt it down my teacher reluctantly grabbed a simple desk chair for me to use. I haven’t gone back since. Once exposed to it I just preferred it. Several years later I was introduced to the technique of pianist Glenn Gould via a PBS documentary (via BBC). I saw that he was using a chair and I said (out loud) “Finally, someone else who uses a chair too!“
 

Gould’s chair was made by his father Bert, and is now in storage at the National Library of Canada.

It wasn’t until recently that I found out there is an Italian company that has taken on the task of re-creating this now infamous chair, which will set you back € 990,- ( around $1557.00!). In their defense, It’s pretty authentic. They managed to copy it exactly, right down to the worn stain and ornate back rest. This is their copy:

While I’m fascinated with the idea of having a chair like Gould’s, I’m not an idiot. $1557 is a massive chunk of change for a simple chair. In fact, it’s not the chair itself I was interested in, it was that it was an adjustable chair. The typical height from a piano keyboard to the floor is around 27″, but they do vary. A typical Steinway is 27¼” while a Bösendorfer is closer to 28″. This might not be a big deal but if I play one height for a considerable time then suddenly switch to another height, it becomes noticeable.

I haven’t been able to find any specific literature on Bert’s ideas for the hardware but it was a good concept. The idea was to have threaded glides with rubber caps which would be attached to a wing nut that was welded to a plate then mounted to the chair’s legs:

Pretty good, but I don’t like the exposed hardware. So I set out to come up with an alternative way of making a similar chair do the same thing. However, why does the hardware need to be so visible? Why not have the hardware on the inside of the legs? It would work just the same, just not be so unsightly. But how would one go about doing this? It would certainly have to be a system that was strong enough to hold a 175lbs man for hours on end, on a daily basis. No matter how it would work, this would become a project proving the rule that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

First, I needed a chair. The one I was using for years was O.K. but I wanted to work with a wooden chair so I could alter it easily. I found a great one at Costco for around $35:

Now to get to work. Since I decided that the best option was to have all the mechanics inside the legs, I first thought I would have either a cotter pin or peg-in-shaft system:

However, there’s a flaw with this idea – it would cause a point of pressure at the pin hole every time someone sat in it. The wood for this chair is pretty strong but couldn’t take that much. The solution would lie in having a system where the stress points were at the strongest parts of the legs. It would have to utilize the mass of the leg and direct the stress vertically down it.

Having that in mind, I took a trip to the local hardware store. I wanted to keep Bert’s idea of a threaded glide that had a rubber tip at the end because regardless of the type of floor I was on it would not slide around. Yet, I couldn’t find something that looked enough like this. I found chair glides that were too small but that was it. After several searches on the internet I found some stores that had something kind of like what I wanted, but they only entertained purchases in bulk. I realised I needed to create my own version. I started with a simple 5/16 threaded bolt that was 4″ long and had a wide head:

My next problem was how to fashion the rubber tip to it. I needed something that would essentially ‘fill’ the rubber tip while at the same time make it strong enough to hold anyone in the chair. I couldn’t make anything out of wood because it wouldn’t be strong enough. So I came up with the idea of threading hex nuts on the end of it but it wasn’t wide enough. Then I grabbed some wide washers and alternated them with the hex bolts:

Not bad. I’m building mass to fill the rubber tip and it would certainly be strong enough. But I didn’t think it was the best it could be; the rubber tip wouldn’t stay on as well as it could be. Enter epoxy:

It’s easy to apply once it’s activated and hardens as tough as nails. This stuff rules. (Although it smells, in the words of Will Ferrell, “…like a dead raccoon stuffed with ricotta cheese.”) I proceeded to make strands of epoxy and place them around the nuts and between the washers so as to fill out the area. Then, after placing the rubber tip over it I put a little more on the top area for good measure:

And here we have it!

Now the part of the chair itself.  Since I really liked Gould’s height “requirements” which are lower than your typical piano bench or chair, I decided to use his numbers and went with a max height of 16.5″ and a minimum height of 13.8″. My new Costco chair was too tall so I needed to make some cuts. I needed to measure the height of the lowest point of my pegs to that of the minimum height of the chair and I came up with a total of 5½” that needed to be cut off. If you go back to the image of the chair you’ll see two cross-bar supports at the back towards the bottom of the legs. The lowest bar was too low so it needed to be sacrificed.

Since it became apparent the only way it would be strong enough was to have the stress going down vertically, the inside of the legs needed to be stronger than with just the wood. I also needed to accommodate for the threaded bolts as they went into the legs. A simple hex nut wouldn’t work because of its size so I went with a coupling nut which is basically a long hex nut. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly the required length of the threaded bolt so I got some hollow steel spacers to fill it out more:

The steel spacers are only there to keep the leg area strong should there be any awkward stress when sitting in the chair and moving around. I drilled holes ½” wide to allow for the widest of the two which were the spacers.  They would go in first, then the coupling nuts. But I hit a snag: the steel spacers were a few millimeters wider than the coupling nuts so I wouldn’t get a snug fit with them. I thought of epoxy but I thought that was overkill. Looking on my shelf I spotted a roll of hockey stick tape:

Perfect! If I wrap the tape around the coupling nuts it would widen them making for a nice, sound fit. Also,  the fabric-like material hockey tape is made of is great because I could apply a little wood glue on it and pound it in:

I think we’ve got it! The sawed ends weren’t pretty so I put some cherry wood stain on them. Now to insert my ‘pegs’ into the coupling nuts and look for any errors:

And now the finished results:

After several tests of strength (imagine a grown man sitting in a chair and shaking his hips from side to side), I believe it was a success. So far there has been no problems. Fingers crossed!

Now, if I could just play Bach like Gould…