Help with chair repair

[dedee]

I'd like some advice on the best way to repair this chair. This is not antique but until yesterday was perfectly serviceable. The wood I believe is beech and on the left side has been repaired before. The white areas are flash reflections from the glue.

The tenons on the rail are undamaged.

On this left side there is a split that starts at the apex of the previous repair and continues down the side about 1/2"

Although not visible there is also a similar split on the other side

I have all the two small pieces that broke away.

After a good clean up will a white pva or a polyurethane glue be strong enough to hold it all together?

I was wondering whether the addition of a dowel peg might strengthen the M&T. The tenons are about 5/8ths" long.

I am right in thinking that the back panel should be left unglued?

Andy

 

[PowerTool]

I'd clean it up,glue it,and dowel it (probably right through the whole frame),but hopefully ColinC will be along to tell us both the right way to do it... :wink:

Andrew

 

[JFC]

Cut a small groove with the grain down the tenon and make a very very small wedge . Repair your mortice and when you glue up the wedge in the tenon will hit the base of the mortice and open the tenon a little making a tight joint again .
And i thought my old master didn't teach me anything

 

[engineer one]

no jason you just did not think that what he taught you would ever come in
useful in the real world :lol:

often we find it is not what we were taught but the way in which it was taught, and a good teacher if you are lucky enough ever to have had
one teaches things in a way you don't know you are learning,
so it sticks deep down just waiting for the right moment.

good tip though, wonder if colin will agree. :twisted:

paul :wink:

 

[Colin C]

Hi All,
It late but have been working honest ( Working at Libert's in London but I cant start untill they close, which was at 8 pm :roll: )

This is a straight forward repair but I would not use JFC's way of doing it this time as there is not much short grain at the end and you will more than likely
break it more doing that.

What you should is as you have said cleanall of the glue out and check it first to ses if the joint is lose, if it is you can use some veneer to pack the joint.

If I am right, I think some one has used cascamite on it before and I have seen this happen whe it has been used on chairs as it is too brittle.

First check the joint with your veneer ( make sure that it is 2-3 mm smaller in length than the tenon) to make sure that it is not too tight, if it is you can take a little off the tenon but it would be better to scrape the veneer.
When you have a joint you are with ( almost forgot :roll: , it would be better to do your glue up all at the same time )
When you are happy, put glue on the tenon,mortise and a little on the veneer.
Now lay the veneer across the mortise so that some of it is in the mortise but not all of it as when you put the tenon in, it will push the veneer down with it and then clamp it up when you would, also clamping both ends where the small peices have broken out.
I hope I have made this clear and not put in too much
Ps This is fun and brings back some memorys as I spent moest of my first 3 years as a trainee do chairs

 

[Paul Chapman]

Rather than try to repair the existing broken joints, why not do away with them and start again? Cut away some of the wood around the damaged mortices. You could use a router and a sharp chisel to square it up. Then glue in some pieces, matching the existing wood as far as possible and plane it flush. Then cut off the tenons and clean up the wood. Rout new mortices in the uprights and cross rail and glue in loose tenons - these could be either solid wood or plywood. I reckon this might be stronger and neater than trying to repair the existing broken joints (one of which has already been repaired once and failed).

Hope this helps

Paul

 

[Colin C]

Hi Paul
Your way mightseem easier butto get it strong the best way to joint the new pieces on would be to bird beak them on which is not an easy joint to get right one one side, let a lone two.
My way might seem long winded but as all of the wood is there, ther is no reason that the joints will hold up for many years.
I have see repairs done with cascamite on furniture before and one of the problems is that it gets used for gap filling :roll: but for this it is too brittle and you end up with this problem.
Plus there will be no need for colour matching
I would only replace the joint if they where very badly damaged, which they are not :wink:

 

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[dedee]

Thanks for all the replies.

Me thinks the Colin's veneer method would best suit my skills and abilities. I'll have to look up a bird's beak joint but my guess is that it will be beyond me.

Do you think the addition of a dowel pin through the joint is overkill, unnecessary or could perhaps even weaken the joint?

Also what about the panel? It is about 4" wide appears to be solid oak about 1/4" thick. Should this be glued into place. It is hard to tell if the crud in the slots it sits in is dried glue of just accumulated dirt.

Andy

 

[Steve Maskery]

I'd ... screw a pair of flat angle plates to the back.

I wouldn't.
S

 

[dedee]

Mr G, I'm not sure about badly made or how to define modern. I believe they are pre war (WW II). When I inherited them were covered in that horrible dark brown stain that seems typical of that period and the other one although not rock solid is still very serviceable.
If I can make them last until my kids have grown up I'll be happy.

Andy

 

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[Anonymous]

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[Colin C]

Looks like a bit of badly made cheapo modern furniture. Any repair is doomed if the design is no good to start with. I'd glue it back together as best as possible then screw a pair of flat angle plates to the back. If you think it's worth it you could let them in to the surface and have a go at colouring them to make them less visible.

Nnooooo more angle brakets please :roll: as I have spent lots of hours taking them out

 

[Colin C]

I would not put in a dowel as it would weaken the joint but I have repair chairs like this before and it can work if you follow what I said ( I am not pulling rank or any thing but I have repair furniture for more than 22 years :roll: )
dedee I will also post some pic of how you can glue up the other chair with taking it apart as I have some chairs at the moment that need glueing up but are upholstered and they dont want to pay for it to be taken off ( The Guildhall :roll: and they are cheap chairs :shock: ).
If you want I will also show you what a bird beak joint is but the way I do it is
a little different :wink:
What you could do with the panel is to put some dowels in it ( use barbaque stick as they are 3 mm or get a drill bit as close to the stick as you can), put some panel pins in it ( say two on the top and bottom) but leave some sticking out so when you cut the pin, you have enough to mark the inside of the rail.
This way you have your marks when you take the pins out you will need to drill where the holes are. This will give you some strength to help hold the rail
I hope it goes ok :wink:

 

[dedee]

Colin,
I fully intended to clean up, shim with veneer and glue as per instruction. Do you think bog standard white PVA glue will suffice?

If you have time I would like to see what a bird's beak joint looks like and how to cut it. My limited library has no mention although I gather from some web texts it is some kind of scarf joint?

Any hints & tips and images you have of chair repairs would be very useful as I am sure I will need to do more one day.

Andy

 

[Colin C]

Hi Andy
Yes standard white PVA will do it fine and as for the pics I will be busy the next few days ( working in cambridge to help some one ) but I will be doing the chairs after so I will do the pics then :wink:
You right about the bird beak but I am surprised that google didn't come up with one :?

 

[Anonymous]

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[Colin C]

Yes what is a birds' beak? I couldn't find anything except this http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/C ... oints.html which doesn't seem to apply here (and I still don't understand what it is!).
And where is the panel in this chair - have I missed something?
My point about adding a repair plate is that if a joint is no good to start with (this one broke at both ends) then it's pointless rebuilding it - it has to be reinforced. You find it quite often in old furniture - where a bit of ironwork has been added, sometimes purpose made by a blacksmith, to make up for a weakness which can't be rectified in wood. Especially chairs which can get very stressed.

cheers
Jacob

Hi Jacob
Iwill post some pics of what a bird beak but as for iron work on chairs ](*,) ( I have seen some very nice chairs almost wrecked because of this, one very nice georgian chair comes to mind, that took me a full day to get the metal work out of it :evil: )
Most if not all of the time you see metal work on chairs it is because the person doing the repair, does NOT know what they are doing that is it as I have taken lots of metal work out of chairs and repaired them without have to put it back to have a strong chair.
Some times a little knolage can be a dangerous thing but with forums like this you have a better chace of finding out what is right

 

[dedee]

Jacob,
The panel looks like this.

I've just hand cut some veneers and was quite impressed how thin I could get them. Although any longer than 3/4" was impossible

That is just nudging 1/64th"


Andy