Wondering how to fasten rubber to an aluminum stool is far from a new question, and yet there are many who are wondering what the right answer is. Knowing how to fasten rubber to an aluminum stool makes things a lot safer for your home or business and anyone using stools like these.
How to Fasten Rubber to Aluminum Bar Stools
Determined by the floor types
Depending on the kind of floor you have, you might want rubber underneath the stool legs. This is important for protection and in more than one way. First of all, rubber feet on stool legs mean far more support and stability for anyone sitting on a stool, meaning it’s far less likely to fall over or slide around. At home, you don’t want your friends and family to hurt themselves. If you’re doing this at a business, then you still don’t want anyone to get injured.
It protects your floor
Secondly, rubber feet on the bottoms of aluminum stools mean that your flooring will be protected. Even if an aluminum stool has decently manufactured feet on them, it’s still metal. That’s going to wreak havoc on the wood flooring of most types. Many kinds of laminate are also going to get scratched up, dinged, and dented. Even if you have something that laughs at aluminum, like rock or concrete, it won’t be the aluminum laughing in the end as it gets scraped up, banged up, and even warped. Rubber feet on aluminum stools can save the value of both your flooring and your stools themselves.
Remove the original feet
You might have to remove the original or older feet from an aluminum stool before putting on new ones. Many standard sizes of stools can just be fitted with equally standardized pieces of rubber. Sizing is what matters here. Too big, and they’ll slip off. Too small, and they’ll eventually rip and tear and be useless. In fact, a stool with three good rubber feet and one bad one is still a dragging and tipping hazard.
Some aluminum feet actually attach by the use of screws or other fasteners. These are certainly more secure than just the slip-on models, but slip-on models work well when done right. Also, slip-on is necessary when there are no holes in the aluminum for screws or fasteners. Drilling holes is technically possible, but it might weaken the structural integrity of the stool and possibly even void warranties and insurance coverages you rely on.
Stick to the size
Make sure you’re not too far off on your sizing if you don’t use fasteners of some kind. Rubber expands and contracts at different rates in variable temperatures than aluminum does, and you don’t want the rubber feet slipping off in a different season because of different weather or internal climate control settings.
Having said that, it’s usually possible to use some kind of glue or adhesive to make sure that once a rubber foot is in place that it’s going to stick there for a long time. It can mean it’s harder to get off when you need to replace them, though. There are many judgment calls you have to make in this process.