I've come across 5 pressback chairs, early 1900's. I'm going to refinish them but first have to strip and re-glue the dowels. I have always put faith in the yellow but have seen chairs loosen up again over time.Question which is better yellow carpenters grade glue or gorilla ? tks in advance Dan
Someday, it'll all be over....
Dan,
Again - welcome to the rec. Hide glue and wrap the dowel in a thin wood shaving (long grain to long grain) if there's a lot of slop and the chair has some antique value. You may want to do a search on restoration techniques to get some definitive methods for doing this.
If it doesn't have any antique value and the joints are loose you may want to consider (tinted) epoxy since it can be used for gap filing. The other glues (yellow, white, or poly) could be used also providing you have a snug fit - which I doubt and have to resort to using a shaving or some other means for making the joint a snug fit. The wood will swell using yellow or white glues but after awhile, they dry out and the joint then comes apart again. You need to remove all the old glue from the joints which if its the original glue is most likely hide glue. A little vinegar and warm water will help remove it.
The poly glues (Gorilla brand and others) do foam out giving you the impression that they are gap filing - they are not. The walls of the foam (bubbles) are not strong.
Bob S.
Hide glue. Works, strong, has a certain amount of elasticity. It's also removable in 100 years, when they're next due for maintenance. Chair making is hard work - there's a lot of racking force in those joints.
I'm not sure what hide to use. Some of my old chairmaking books use a mixture of rabbit skin glue in with the usual pearl glue, to add a little more flexibility. I need to experiment here.
White glues would work here too, but they'd work until they fail, then quite possibly damage the joint irrepairably. They're great glues for things that don't get highly loaded or don't ever move, but a joint in a 100 year old chair is an ongoing process, not a one-time assembly.
I don't much like poly glues, they're poor on this sort of joint and they're disastrous for repair or refurb work. They have poor gap-filling properties - they _fill_ a gap, but they lose all their strength when unsupported.
-- Smert' spamionam
Hide glue actually. Chair joints take stresses unknown to other furniture and no matter what you do use it will loosen in time. A hide glue joint is reversible.
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