Chair repair

[kmealy]

Today, I picked up a chair to repair from a friend of my wife.  I won't get started on it today, but here are the before status photos.   Two things you should never do in repairing a chair

1) Use screws or nails to secure a leg tenon.  They hold the piece together but don't make the joints tight.  And nails are terrible to remove, usually causing peripheral damage.  And they can fracture the tenon, that it did.  

2) Use polyurethane Gorilla Glue.  It's terrible to clean up for future repairs, the foam can push the joint apart, and while it fills "gaps" that gap filling has all the strength of a piece of Styrofoam.

 

There are some other loose joints and one tenon that is sheared and will need some structural repair.  Obviously one of the stretcher tenons had been out for a while based on the rub marks.

 

"A stich in time saves nine."  When one joint is loose, it puts additional force on its neighbors causing them to loosen up too.

 

On with the "My husband tried to repair this,"  DPR (dreaded prior repair).

 

[lew]

May the force be with you...

[Headhunter]

Not a problem, Keith. You can do this in your sleep.

 

And I would recommend that. So that you don't have to look at the cluster they gave you!

[kmealy]

Not a lot of time for it today, but phase 1 is complete -- got the screws out and (most of) the joints apart and cleaned off the *(#)*# Gorilla Glue.  Please, never use it for a chair repair.   An additional problem noted, all the minor joints on the legs and stretchers are brad nailed and deep inset. You  can see some of them in the photo. I managed to get one out, but hope I can avoid having to do the rest.  Two stretcher tenons are fractured off and need to decide how to fix them.

 

[DAB]

forensically, the stress on the various joints that failed exceeded the strength of the joint.  rebuilding these joints will not affect the later stresses on these joints.

 

which is a long way of saying it's going to fail again unless something is changed.  either the stress applied to the chair (no fat people!), which is unlikely, or the strength of the joints is increased.

 

given the limited choices in glues and the fixed geometry of the chair, i'd be inclined to tell the owner it's time for a different chair design that will last longer than this one.

[DAB]

you need to learn from failures not to keep doing the same thing....

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s7HzHU3_LE8

[kmealy]

On with the repairs.  The mid-stretcher was epoxied and a dowel inserted from the outside.

The larger joint had all the crap cleaned out of the mortise, a new tenon added and glue is now sitting up.   While I normally hate to do it, I might epoxy this joint back together.

[kmealy]

I found some old "Chair Doctor" glue that I injected into the slightly wobbly joints that were brad nailed.  Checked today and it did a good job.  The theory is it swells the fibers and glues surfaces. 

 

Dry fit and glue-up today on all the other joints. PVA glue in most of the joints and some epoxy in the one with the broken tenon.   Ready for some touch up where color lost due to damage. 

 

BTW owner said a guest leaned back on the chair and put in on the back two legs.   It looked like that was just the final straw that broke the camel's back

 

 

 

[kmealy]

Got the touch-up coloring done and ready to go.

[kmealy]

https://paulsellers.com/2025/02/nine-years-a-cafe-chair-equals/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly with RPK link