Broken Chairs

[Vikki in WA State]

The legs on my dining room chairs keep falling off. The cross pieces between the legs won't stay they are usually laying on the floor. Then the legs do the "bambi on ice" when you sit on the chair. It seems like when you sit in a chair, the legs move away from each other allowing the cross pieces to fall out, then the next time someone sits in it the whole thing will collapse. I have glued the chairs, I have put screws in them, I tried cleaning out the old glue and trying a different brand of glue. I hate to give up on the set. It is a beautiful table and really nice chairs if the stupid legs would stay where they belong.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a better glue? Should I just throw them out? I hate to give up on anything, but this has been going on since I bought the set.

I have used weldwood glue, a yellow woodworker's glue, elmers, and a rubber cement type glue.

TIA for any help you can give me.

Vikki in WA State

[js]

clean them up well and try gorilla glue. your either not using enough glue to get a good bond, arent prepping it good enough, or your one heavy dude.

[Phisherman]

Hate to say, but the chairs are being abused (children rough housing,

500-lb people using them, water damage, etc.) they were not made properly in the first place.

[Ruster]

Go to rockler's web site, they have some chair repair glue which works great. Our chair were doing the same thing. I used this stuff and the chair are like new. This is not actually a glue, it is a liquid which caused hte wood to expand and makes the joint tight as can be. Plus the cleanup is a snap, gorilla glue would work but this stuff is a bear to cleanup, plus this would require clamping.

[Bob Bowles]

[Lew Hodgett]

Time for the heavy duty stuff, EPOXY filled with some micro-balloons.

You will need to take the chair apart, clean out all the old glue, then reassemble using the filled epoxy.

Plan ahead. You will also need some type of band clamping to keep everything in place while the epoxy cures.

Get a copy of "Gougeon Bros on Boat Building" from the library. It describes a lot of epoxy techniques including making the filled epoxy putty.

Have fun.

[Vikki in WA State]

Thanks for the input, I will try your reccomendations, My sister thinks they werent made right. we are just normal size people and have no children so that leaves that out.

again thanks for the input.

vikki

[Silvan]

"normal size people" probably means you and she are both lugging around a substantial spare tire. :)

[dave]

If the furniture was the quality of the stuff we get here in the Washington DC area from a bunch called something like merlo, it was poorly made and the joints didn't fit. It doesn't take much to work a joint that really isn't one. No amount of glue can fill that kind of a hole unless it has good filling properties, as Gorrilla and Elmers polyurethane glues do. It's been recommend repeatedly, I did so off line. Play nice Mike, Dave in Fairfax