How To Assemble A Repaired Wooden Chair

Chairs are a mutual repair for piece of furniture considering they are oft subjected to a live load due to people shifting and moving in them, leaning back on them and even standing on them.

If you oasis't watched our video on How to Repair Wooden Chair Joints, I recommend that y'all accept a look at it starting time, considering in that video I demonstrate how a whole chair is taken apart and put back together. The information will exist helpful when doing any chair repair.

The first affair to know about chair construction is you will rarely see metal in forest, like a spiral. Metal is stronger than forest, and when that live load is applied and there is shifting going on, the metal will article of clothing out the wood and therefore cause joints to fail. In some cases an arm of a chair may take a screw in it.

The thing that holds a chair together is gum, and there are different types you tin use depending on the blazon of repair you are doing.

Types of Glue

• PVA Gum (polyvinyl acetate glue) – this is common woodworking glue, sometimes called carpenter'southward glue. It'southward water based and is easy to clean upwards.
• Hide Glue – This type of mucilage is used when y'all are doing article of furniture restoration.  You can buy this pre-fabricated or more usually information technology's mixed and heated in a pot of warm water, and applied when warm.  This glue can be reactivated and loosened upwards by warming it up.  Information technology is good for taking apart antiques without damaging them, therefore it's the best glue for restoration work.  It is the original type of glue used for making chairs over the centuries.
• Polyurethane Glue – this mucilage would be used if y'all were building or repairing outdoor article of furniture.  It is a water proof gum that volition withstand the outdoor elements.  Gorilla Glue is a common brand.
• Epoxy – this type of glue sticks to many types of surfaces and volition fill voids in wood. If you have a loose joint that may be missing parts, this glue will concur everything together, where the other types of mucilage won't.

PVA glue is used for nigh all of the chair repairs I do. This glue is very common, just I make sure I have a good quality brand.  I adopt to utilise the Lee Valley make as information technology cleans up well later it dries.  Yous too desire to make sure your glue is less than a year old.  When I buy my glue I normally will write my own death date on it with permanent marker and then it reminds me when to throw it out.  If y'all are using gum that is 2-three years onetime, at that place may be a risk that the glue will fail and after going through all the work to repair the chair, you definitely don't want information technology to fail because y'all used sometime mucilage!

Applying Glue to Chair Parts

When doing a chair repair you can't just put a bunch of glue in the hole and hope for the best. In the woodworking world, a hole in piece of furniture is referred to as a mortise, and the part that goes into the hole is chosen a tenon.

The mucilage is the just thing that holds everything together and because of that you need to brand certain the glue is spread evenly on all sides of the tenon and the mortise.  The bottom of the tenon and mortise wont affect, so putting glue in that location is useless.

When spreading the glue I recommend using an artist's brush.  I have several that I utilise in my workshop.  They are non expensive, just a few dollars each and they are the best tool for getting in the nooks and crannies and making certain the glue is spread everywhere.

Don't always be tempted to use your finger to spread the glue.  The oils on your fingers can weaken the glue, so use a brush and only a brush!

Clamping

For wood to bond together with glue the parts need to be tight and have force per unit area applied. That is why information technology is of import to clamp pieces nether pressure. Don't go crazy, merely a moderate amount of pressure level to keep the pieces together.

I adopt to use quick grip clamps because they have condom pads that assistance adjust and hold the parts of the chairs that are round or on odd angles.

Some other way to clench is past using cotton rope. Information technology must be cotton and no other cloth to avoid damaging the chair. The rope tin be tied around a pair of legs to form a big loop. Then add a dowel in between the two parallel ropes and twist them up to tighten the tension the rope. Information technology'southward hard to describe merely easy to understand by watching the video, starting at this scene:

I also put something heavy on the chair later gluing to make sure the legs are balanced. This reduces the run a risk of having the legs uneven which will cause more work to trim the legs after the glue dries.

Cleaning Mortises and Tenons

When gluing upwardly chair parts they accept to be absolutely clean every bit most wood glue will just stick to bare forest. If there is whatsoever finish or former glue in the joint the new glue won't stick. You demand to have bare wood on both surfaces.

There are 2 ways to clean a tenon (the role that goes in the pigsty):

1. Accept a small strip of sandpaper and sand it off. You lot can take the sand paper and really bend it around the wood and twist.
2. File the woods, which is actually the faster method. When using the file, just make sure yous don't take off besides much of the woods surface or the joint will be loose.

There are 2 types of mortises you will encounter in chair repairs, one is a through mortise where the pigsty goes all the fashion through the piece of wood. The other is a regular mortise which is ane that has a bottom.

1. Through mortise – clean information technology upwards using a a slice of sandpaper and twist it around inside, or you can use a round file. Just be careful not to change the shape of the hole or you will stop upwards with a loose joint.
2. Regular mortise – I utilize a drill bit that's the same width as the mortise and advisedly run it backwards while pushing information technology into the mortise. This reduces the run a risk of changing the bending of the hole. Once the drill bit is at the bottom of the mortise, I run it frontward to clear out the erstwhile glue.

Fixing Loose Chair Parts

If you see a repair where the tenon is loose in the mortise, traditional glue won't stick the articulation together considering the wood fibres are non connecting. In this case yous need to make the tenon thicker, or use epoxy glue, which I endeavor to avoid.

To make a tenon thicker, I use a thick shaving of wood and glue it around the tenon right before applying the mucilage and inserting it into the mortise. Once the tenon is seated in the mortise, and while the mucilage is still wet, trim off the excess wood shaving with a utility pocketknife to become a overnice flush fit.

To brand the thick wood shaving I use a heavy cutting on my hand plane.

Reinforcing Chair Parts

Sometimes you can just glue a broken role together and information technology will be strong enough on its own.  Other times it needs reinforcement to requite it some additional forcefulness.

An example of this is using a spline. A spline is a slot cut in the wood where y'all insert a new piece of wood into the slot, giving it continuous strength through the joint. This photo shows a spline that was added to the dorsum of a chair upright.  The break had been poorly repaired before which meant the glue had to be scraped out and therefore there wasn't a good connection between the mating wood surfaces. This technique is a great manner to save a piece of piece of furniture that would otherwise finish up in a landfill.

Sometimes reinforcing a broken role volition make information technology strong but in some situations it won't. Below is an case of a chair stretcher that was cleaved right at the mortise.

In this case there was no way that piece could have been repaired with just applying mucilage, so I ended upwardly having to brand a new ane and replace it.

Pulling Finishing Nails

If y'all are repairing a chair with finishing nails driven through the chair joints, will will need to pull the nails out earlier you lot tin get the chair apart. At that place's no way to like shooting fish in a barrel way to pull them out. I brainstorm by using a small drill bit and drill a hole on either side of the nail. Then I use needle olfactory organ pliers to pull the smash out. This is isn't easy and will challenge your patience.

Unfortunately this method does damage the chair, just if it's the only style to repair the chair, covering up a few holes is worth it.

I hope y'all accept establish these tips to fixing wooden chairs helpful. Let us know what you lot retrieve.

Source: http://homeimprovementwoodworking.com/furniture/tools-and-tips-to-fix-wooden-chairs/

Posted by: taymosted1971.blogspot.com

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