> Milady has a honey do project that I'm way overdue on.
>
> We have an antique oak dining room table, maybe 75 to 100 years old. The
> casters on the table were built to last 50 years, not 75 or 100. I told
> SWMBO to just get the same casters and we'll replace them, no problem. >
> Well, she can't find a match. Today's casters a have a smaller diameter post
> and don't have roller bearings for the swivel. That means I'll need to pull
> the old collar out of this antique oak to put in a matching collar for a
> modern caster. (Do I need to tell you what will happen if I screw up and mar
> up one of the legs?)
>
> How do you pull an old caster collar out of very hard very antique oak?
You don't. Not under any circumstances.
Or,
> better yet, anybody know a good source for antique heavy duty table casters?
You could check the usual suspects like Lee Valley, Restoration Hardware, etc. Or you can find something that's pretty close and then use your metalworking skills to modify it to match the old ones, after all there are only four of them right? Or you can use your metalworking skills to fully restore the existing ones.
Pete C.