Herman Miller Aluminum Group Lounge Chair  

relax
It's real.

by the way,
does anyone know why or when they stopped using the antler for adjustable chairs?
The newer part looks so alien to the chair!

Antler I'm pretty sure that they only replaced the antler because it was necessary in order to improve the tilt mechanism. The original Flo-Tilt mechanism used a rubber cylinder as a sort of torsion element (except that it operated in shear rather than torsion). That cylinder was only a few inches long, so it fit in a little box to which the antler could be attached, as shown in the first photo below. Unfortunately, that mechanism wasn't very reliable, so they replaced it with a regular steel torsion bar. Steel is harder to twist than rubber, though, so for the same resistance, a steel bar has to be to be either much longer or much thinner than a rubber piece. I assume that they chose to make the bar longer -- and consequently abandon the antler for a full-width tube to hold it -- because a steel bar as short as the rubber joint would have been too thin and weak for the stresses placed on it. As to WHEN they made the change... I don't know exactly, but I guess we can narrow it down to sometime between the early 70's -- when my first wife's first husband purchased her antler-and-Flo-Tilt-equipped EA124 -- and 1990, when hbrulay's torsion-bar chair (as shown in the second photo) was manufactured.
 
Edited by DA: Broken images removed

Thanks for feedback!
So, my wife hates the chair. She doesn't like the feel of the vinyl and the brown color. She'd prefer a have a womb chair with matching ottoman in the boucle wool fabric. So, how much do you all think I can get for the herman miller lounge chair? Is the best way to sell on Ebay?

Try CL first
It will be a pain to ship.
You might get ~300 on eBay.

Shipping an EA124+EA125...
...across the country via Greyhound costs less than $100.

Thanks for the info, fastfwd!
Thanks for the info, fastfwd! Makes sense to me as the chairs with the old mechanism that appear on ebay are often damaged. I still want one: untreated aluminium, black armrest - like in the picture I posted above...
If you look at what people pay for Eames armchairs on ebay (let alone the 670 lounge chair) the Alu Lounger is underrated. Naugahyde vinyl versions seem to be especially unpopular.
It's a durable, good looking and comfortable chair for reading or watching TV, at least in my opinion.
Good if you want to buy, bad if you want to sell 🙁

Option for chair on terrace
For a mere $300, I'd rather keep this chair and use it in the future when I have more space. For now, how would this chair fare in the elements if I place it in an outdoor, covered terrace? I do enjoy sitting on it when I read the NYTimes on Sundays. No rain would get to it. But, I do live close to the coast. Since it's vinyl and aluminum, would it still be prone to rust?

Outdoors
I'd expect it to be just fine in that environment. If you really want to keep the uncoated aluminum looking new, you could wipe it down every once in a while with a WD40-soaked rag... And I guess you could use ArmorAll on the vinyl, even though the Naugahyde company doesn't recommend it.
http://www.naugahyde.com/faq.html

Strange question
Can you put an old executive chair on a old swivel only, non-rocking lounge base?
edit: Reason I ask is I have pre-1975 chair that HM no longer can reupholster (they retooled in 1975 or something like that). It needs a new skin - it's vinyl and quite cracked.

Antler EA 124
Hi, you seem a specialist in terms of EA 124 bases... I just buyed an old EA 124 & 125 at an auction, but some parts of the original Flo-tilt-mechnanism are missing. Do you have an idea who could help ?

Joe, here's one from the forum.
Protorio's post from January.
http://middlebrowmodern.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/eames-aluminum-group-lo...

where are you located, hbrulay?
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