Wooden chair repair

[Dan Hartung]

This was a standard old wooden chair with two side rungs and one rung front and back. With a couple of the side rungs fallen out the chair legs began to "sag" and eventually through misuse (my relative has a household full of children who like to tilt them) the chair more or less collapsed. It would have been fine, of course, had the rungs been glued back in place at the first opportunity!

Now what has happened:

1) the seat actaully split where one leg was embedded. A sliver about 3/4" wide and 1-1/4" long is bent out of the wood. I imagine it can be glued and tapped back in place, but will it have strength to hold the leg now?

2) one of the spindles split at the base, not a clean break either. This is probably ideally fixed with a dowel, but is a "for now" fix with glue acceptable if the rest of the back is properly glued and put back together?

[Doc]

Considering the damage you could do to yourself if it "let go" when you sat down on it, I'd be inclined to toss it out and get a new one.

Doc

[jim]

throw out the chair.. your back is worth more than a broken chair... dont believer me?? just sit in it and fall over backwards and see how long it takes for you back to heal....

[Chris Lewis]

According to Dan Hartung :

You can do virtually anything with the proper glue as long as the wood itself still reasonably solid, and you spend enough time piecing things back together. Modern glues (especially good carpenters glues or regular epoxies, not "5 minute" per-se) are stronger than the wood itself when used right.

Whether the result is "acceptable" is going to depend on a lot of things. Like, how much is the chair really worth to you? Will you manage to avoid abuse beyond its capability? How well built was it in the first place?

It's rarely something that anyone else can judge for you sight-unseen.

We've had some chairs we've bothered repairing only because the teddy bears who use them have promised to treat them _very_ gently. One bear refused, and he has to sit on the floor instead.

If it's otherwise reasonably sound and has some redeeming characteristics, we usually repair it. But, turning new legs, for example, may be a bit beyond what you're interested in doing.

A badly-split leg on a chair is probably beyond saving, unless you're going to restrict it to light duty, or spend the time to use dowels or make a new leg.

[He says, with a chair in the garage waiting for him to turn a new leg.]

[ken]

If you insist on trying to fix this chair and are wondering what kind of glue to use then u might want to try the "Chair Doctor Pro". I recently purchased this item from Lee Valley. It is made by Veritas of Ogdensburg, NY and Ottawa, Canada. "The remarkable new glue that wicks into joints, swells the wood, and locks it tight." The kit consists of a bottle of glue and a syringe with three different sizes of needles to get in to joints or cracks. For several years i have been gluing the kitchen chairs off and on and knew that they wouldnt last all that long. Just started using this new glue product and it seems to be real good. Only time will tell but i was very pleased with the application method and if the write-up is correct then i expect it will last a long time. See it at

, and its not really expensive. Good luck, Ken, makin dust in NS