Karl Townsend wrote:

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.