The all wood footboard of one of our beds has been squeaking at the joint where the horizontal board attaches to the vertical post. I tried spraying some silicone in there a few weeks ago to silence it but to no avail.
Yesterday when my wife was changing the sheets somehow the board separated from the post. Nothing is broken, it just came out of the notches where the dowels and main load bearing connection are. I pushed everything back together for now, but I doubt it will hold together forever.
Why is there no glue in these connections? Everything seems to be dry fitted together. Should I put some wood glue in there and hold it all together with bungee cords until it dries?
When the wood was "greener", it was probably a very tight, press fit. There may, actually, have been some wood glue but not much -- as there wasn't much *room* for it ("press fit") -- that has now dried to a nearly invisible film. The mechanical relationships of the various "members" probably go a long way to keeping things "together".
You can add some wood glue (yellow). Have a damp cloth handy to wipe up any that oozes from the joint. I doubt you'll find a combination of bungy cords that are the "appropriate" length. But, a strap clamp can be used (convenient to have). Put a wash cloth or some other soft material between the clamp's strap and the wood so you don't mar the finish.
[Hint: glue both ends of each piece at the same time so each clamp application does double duty]
If you don't want to buy a clamp, you can use a length of rope tied in a loop with a small piece of wood inserted and twisted, tourniquet style, to take up the slack (careful not to overtighten).
There may have been glue which has dried out. With shrinkage over time, the parts have separated.
The problem with using regular wood glue is that it does not fill gaps nor will it work well on surfaces that has wood glue dried on them. Wood glue needs to soak into the wood fibers in order to work well. If you sand all the old wood glue off of the dowels and hole, everything will probably end up being too loose for wood glue to work. Catch 22.
Depending on how loose the joint is, you might be able to repair it with Gorilla glue (not Gorilla Wood Glue, original Gorilla glue). I've repaired a number of chairs with Gorilla glue and they have held up well. (I'll be doing another one this weekend)
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If the joints are *really* loose, you can try a couple of things:
Option 1:
You could use Gorilla glue along some toothpicks shoved in along side the dowels. Gorilla glue expands while curing and can help lock everything together. The expansion is key. Read the instructions carefully. You don't want to use so much that it oozes out and makes a big mess. Keep an eye on it and wipe up the ooze with a damp cloth before it cures.
Option 2:
You could use a back saw and cut a notch in the end of the dowels and then insert a small wedge to widen them enough for a snug fit. Then use Gorilla glue.
Option 3:
I've never tried these, but I've heard they work for dowel connections as well as screw hole repair. I bought some to repair a chair last weekend, but chickened out and went with the Gorilla glue. If the chairs were mine and I could keep an eye on them, I might have tried them. However, I'm fixing them for an adult day-hap and wanted to go with a repair that was sure would work.
They are metal strips with little barbs that supposedly dig into the wood a lock everything together. Use at your own peril.
Has *ANYBODY* thought to ask bgm what type of joint this is ? Bed rails are often coupled to the head and foot board with a pair of pins in the post that engage notches in a metal plate (post has a slot for the metal plate) that is fastened to the end of the rail . If this is the way it's made , you have a couple of choices - assuming the plate is tightly fastened you can put a shim between the post and the end of the rail . If it's loose , tighten it up with new fasteners and possibly move it a bit to tighten up the joint . If it's a glued joint as others have assumed , you're screwed . That silicone you sprayed in there has soaked into the wood now and nothing is going to stick .
He didn't say the bed rails were loose, he said the *foot board* was loose.
He used the words: "Nothing is broken, it just came out of the notches where the dowels and main load bearing connection are."
The corner posts often have a notch into which a tenon on the foot board (or head board) go, which is then (sometimes) secured with dowels.
Granted, a picture sure would help.
Not necessarily. With a little work, the parts could be notched to give them tooth which a product such as Gorilla glue could grab.
Better yet would be to use some 2 part epoxy with a filler additive such as West Systems 404. See the "General Bonding" item in this list:
http://209.20.76.247/ss/filler-selection-guide/
A couple of dove tail like notches in both parts would allow the epoxy to get "behind" the wood and lock everything together.
Heck, a couple of fancy bolts and nylon lock nuts might even work, depending how long the tenon is. Once the loose side is secured, add 2 bolts on the other to balance out the visual.
By saying "you're screwed" you are implying that he should just throw the entire bed away because he used silicon spray. There are so many options for fixing this bed that to make that implication is ridiculous.
Snag did not qualify his "screwed" reference by limiting it to a glue repair, he simply said that bgm is "screwed".
bgm isn't screwed, but the bed may have to be. ;-)
As I said earlier, a picture would really help. Nothing against bgm, but the mere fact that he thought silicon spray was a good remedy for a squeaky wood-to-wood connection may mean that his description isn't extremely accurate. Even if the silicon stopped the squeak, it would have only treated the symptom, not cured the disease. (that's for bgm) When I read "notch" I think mortise and tenon, not dowels, unless the tenon was secured with dowels at a right angle, as in though the face of the bed post.
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If that's the case, I'm not sure how the foot board went from loose to "separated from the post". "Separated" as in pulled out? I'm not sure how that would happen with through dowels. Loose, yes. Pulled out? Not unless the dowels themselves fell out or cracked. It would be really tough to crack the through dowels unless there was major damage to lots of other wood in that area. There was no mention of that in bgm's description.
Now, it is possible as I said before, that instead of a tenon on the end of the foot board rails, they made the mortise in the bed post large enough to accept the full foot board rail and used dowels on the end (in-line) instead of a tenon. That takes the weight off of the dowels but provides more secure connection than just gluing the end of the foot board into a shallow mortise. If that was the case, it would not only fit his description ("it just came out of the notches where the dowels and main load bearing connection are made") but it would also be a fairly common issue caused by dried out glue.
Of course, maybe I've got the entirely wrong idea of what bgm, means by "notches"
Sure sounds that way when you " If it's a glued joint as others have assumed , you're screwed . That silicone you sprayed in there has soaked into the wood now and nothing is going to stick ."
I hate it when that happens . It's very clear when you take it in context that I meant that a *GLUE* repair is not going to work .
Sorry, there were no dowels. I was writing the original post from another computer while not at home. Never mind the dried up wood glue on the post, i picked it all off after the picture. That end of the bed has very little light shining on it so I didn't see all that when I was setting up the strap and gluing it. It seems to be bonded just fine and doesn't squeak anymore.
It would have been nice to see a picture of the disassembled joint just for clarity. Is there a tenon on the end of those 2 sections that go into the mortise (notch) or was it just the full sized ends themselves?
The bottom looks as if the full size end goes into the mortise but there might still be a tenon on the end of it. Just curious.
This is a mortise & tenon joint:
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How snug was the fit when you put it back together?
If it was loose enough that it fell out more or less on it's own, regular wood glue may not hold up. As I mentioned in an earlier post, regular wood glue is not meant to fill gaps, so typically a snug fit is desirable. It may hold for a while, but if the bond isn't strong enough it will eventually dry out and loosen up. I really do hope that doesn't happen, but if it does at least you'll know why and you'll be prepared to try something different, like Gorilla glue, next time.
I spent most of the day reassembling a curved back antique chair.
14 joints, some mortise & tenon, some doweled (2 - 3 dowels each) The old glue had to be cleaned off all 14 joints (both sides) before could be glued back together. 10 of the 14 joints had to be glued up in one shot.
The square chairs I did last weekend were easy. Round back chairs, with curved joints aren't easy to clamp. I spent close to an hour doing a dry run to figure out a workable clamping scheme that I could get done in the 10 - 15 working time that the Gorilla glue allowed. When I was ready, I had SWMBO come down to shop for an extra pair of hands to hold things together while I got all the clamps in place.
What a pain but SWMBO loves the chair (it came from her Grandmother) so I didn't really mind.
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