Gluing up seats

[Scoffy]

Hi all,
I have made a few windsor chairs before, but I have always managed to get a wide enough piece of elm for the seats with no defects in. I have a couple of pieces of elm that I would like to use for seats, the problem is they have some serious defects in the middle. Would I be best to cut the defects out, and glue the two halves without the defect, or should I mix up some epoxy and elm sawdust and fill the defects, the defects on the good side are about 4 inches long and about 5/8 inch wide, on the 'bad' side they are a lot bigger. These would be made to sell so would have to look OK.

Thanks in advance

Scoffy

 

[Glynne]

I would be inclined to try and fill the defects as you suggest and if that doesn't work then cut them out and re-glue. The only thing you'll lose is a little bit of time.
Lots of seats are made by joining boards, even Maloof chairs don't always have one solid piece of timber.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Don't try to hide something that size - it doesn't work. Either cut them out or find a way of making a contrasting material look good. Of course you can fill them in some way first then cut them out if you don't like the effect.

 

[ED65]

If you go ahead with a fill instead of using the elm sawdust to pack out the epoxy I would suggest you use something contrasting, so the fill is obvious at first glance and doesn't come across as an attempt to hide the defect.

Black fills have been popular for many years and I think they look good on a wide range of timbers. Can't say that I've seen it used on elm but in my head at least it looks fine