"ChairMan" wrote in message
...

it sounds like to me the hole in which the sleeve/collar go into is
wallered out.
The collar should fit snugly with no slop. You may need to drill the hole
out, fill with a dowel and redrill the hole, which commonly are 3/8.
If you can post a pic in abpw, I could possibly help some more


I had the same problem on some "not so old chairs" and solved the problem
exactly with that method. Still working 10 years later. My problem was
that the factory drilled the holes too big.