Antique Furniture Restoration on a Broken Platform Spring Rocking Chair by Fixing Furniture

welcome back to fixing furniture today I'm working on this rocking chair now in my last video I gave viewers the option of should I work on a rocking chair next or Windsor chair and the overwhelming response was this rocking chair it's quite unique it doesn't have curved rockers on the bottom it's got a spring action here that allows the chair to rock now the key problem on this is the back here has broken off I've got a Tenon on this side and on this side I've got the Tenon missing so I need to return a piece of wood here to get it to connect in there now when I work on a piece like this I use analogy of an old house you never know what you're going to find until you start doing the work I think there's probably a few surprises in this rocking chair I've got um a pile of parts that are here these I believe go on this side here uh some beautiful hand car parts so these all need to go go together as well there's some loose veneer on the seat when I tap on the veneer it solid in some spots and it's loose in others so there's a lot of work to do here stick with me I'll show you how it's done as a furniture repair business we're opening the doors to our Workshop to show you the tools and techniques to repair Furniture the front rail here you can see this has been broken off we give you tips to make your repair projects easier let's get into the workshop and start fixing Furniture sponsored by Kennedy Hardware offering restoration hard hardware for antique furniture one of the things I enjoy about furniture repair and restoration is a little bit of the mystery how did a cheer like this become so broken well I think there are some fundamental physics here that cause this and if you look at that phrase that people say they don't make things like they used to well there's some Survivor bias in that the furniture that we see that's old is the strongest of the furniture that was built back then I've only been able to find two of these chairs online it's called a platform rocker and uh I believe that there aren't many around because frankly they broke um a traditional rocking chair rocks on a rocker a piece of wood that's curved so as there's pressure put on the back the whole chair moves back and forth but on this particular rocker there's a spring action here so when there's weight put on the back it's there's a constant pressure on that back um so this one clearly broke off um there's been a number of repairs to this already um it's been really really damaged so I'm not sure how much I can reverse of those repairs so we'll take a look at all the different parts here the base is loose I have to take it apart um the key part that I need to work on is the joinery here so that back is going to be as solid as possible up here it's just been brutalized in terms of How It's been put together so a lot of work to undo so let's start by looking at the base taking the base apart and then maybe we get a little more history here in terms of what this chair is all about an old Hardware there typically is some stamping that identifies the hardware and I can see a little bit here so I'll unscrew this pull that plate off and we can take a closer [Music] look okay so on here it says patent January that's tough is that a 97 maybe if I pull another one of these off I can get a better look at it okay so here's another one it's uh a little more pronounced let's see if I clean away some of the Dust around it might make it easier to read okay patented January 5th 97 okay so that's a hint I'll see what I can find online about this but in the meantime I'll continue to take this apart so as I showed you earlier these dowels are moving in and out but in order to take this apart I need to take this joint off and these are sliding dovetails so it's a dovetail shape and this piece of wood is slid in there so I'm not sure if I can take this apart because this is typically a very strong joint it looks like there might be some glue residue here from a repair so I'll see if that'll tap out if not I'm not sure there's much I can do on this end these slighty dub Tails aren't coming apart and you see this lighter line right here this there's actually a bit of texture to it this is glue residue so someone would have glued this together with PVA glue a bit dripped here and they didn't clean it up before it dried and then when they applied the stain it didn't stain there as well so unfortunately these pieces aren't coming apart if these were put together with high glue I could reverse the glue but in this case it's permanent so the best I can do here here is spread these apart see if I can get some high glue in here and tighten those up as best I can so take a clamp convert it over to a spreader clamp and let's see if I can gently open this up enough to get some glue in there okay that's actually come up much more than I thought it would so we'll squeeze some high glue on here and then what I'll do is spread it around all of the tanon so what I'm doing here by doing this is just maximizing the amount of glue I can get on that joint I need a little bit more on the underside here and then I can release the clamp and get this put back together again so I can now clamp this up and the base is all back together again so I'll just clean off the glue residue here before I set this aside and this is the fundamentals of furniture repair and restoration being able to take something apart and glue it together properly with the right adhesive to be able to repair Furniture if this is something you're interested in learning I'm building a Hands-On course so you can learn not just the knowledge but get some experience on how to do furniture restoration and repair check it out at fixing furniture.com the course is coming up soon so I'll set this part aside and then we'll start working on the seat so I've got the seat laid out here with the back and what I want to do is look at the joinery so we'll start here on this post so the tenon's in good shape but it's actually got a bit of a beard that's growing here so for some reason this has carpet on the bottom I don't understand that now if we look at the mortise it's really mangled so this is not going to hold well there's a bunch of glue in there and it's not matching the same size as this so it's loose so that mortise has to be repaired if we look at the center backs Splat here um it's really a beautiful piece but the groove here that the back spat goes into someone has done some repair work and they've added in these little pieces of wood to I think sort of prop it up um but this actually needs to seat inside that slot so there's some repair work to do on this mortise and over here this is where we've got the broken post so someone has put a dowel in here to try and repair this but that's not a good repair technique because you end up losing material and you end up with breakage like this so this whole piece needs to be turned on the lathe fortunately here the mortise is in good shape so be able to salvage that so we've got one Tenon here to repair and two morses here to repair the first thing I'm going to do is take off the posts and get these pieces taken apart now when I got this piece from the customer they didn't provide a lot of history about it but I have noticed that there are some tags on it so in the back here this has a number 203 this one has 202 and it looks like it's from a van line uh perhaps this was an auction it says Lot number B so it looks like this was probably in several pieces when it was auctioned off I'm just curious it looks like there's another tag underneath here let's see oh yeah Lot number so maybe this was on a couple of auction blocks took a while to sell so this is the post here that I need to take off got some slotted screws there's one now I am seeing some glue residue in here so I'm not sure how well these are going to come off so these are round headed screws and over here I've got a flae headed screw and I've got a screw that's missing so I need to get new screws for this chair sourcing slotted screws for antique restoration projects can be very difficult and that's why I'm proud to be partnering with Kennedy Hardware they've got slotted screws so I just need to take my measurement and I can put my order in now I'm going to see if I can take these off but considering there's some PVA glue on either side of these it might be difficult here's a close-up to show you what I mean there's a light line right here that's some PVA glue there's some on the other one as well hopefully this person just put a dab here and the rest will come off but I have to be careful because I don't want the veneer coming off this back so I'm going to take a sharp knife and I'm going to score the joint between these two pieces here because I'm going to get a little help with some vinegar now vinegar dissolves High glue it softens PVA glue a little bit so I don't know how much it's going to help here but I need all the help I can get to make sure I don't damage that vineer so if I flex this you can see I've got a little bit of play happening here that vinegar is I think doing a bit of work so I'll just get the knife back out and see if I can score that a little bit more oh yeah you can see there that white is the rubberiness of the PVA glue so it's starting to give away a little bit so we see if I can get a wedge in here and try that out there we go okay so lucky for me there wasn't a whole lot of glue there it looked like maybe just on the edge see that white line is H that's strange so this is the part I need to remake on the lathe and if I turn this around I can take a look at what the tenin should look like before this one had broken off so there's an odd part here the shoulder of this Tenon um isn't even so here this would be like a normal turning but it's shaped back here and that's to go into the curve of the seat you can see here we've got that curve as well so I'll have to cut the shoulder here on the lathe and then trim it by hand now the other part of the challenge of this turning is we've got a hole here this is for the armrest so that needs to be in a precise location and then also we've got this part here that needs to be be cut out so there's a few opportunities here for errors I need to make sure I go through all of these steps in the right order to make sure all these things are located in the right spot so just measure the length here for the Turning stock so 25 and A4 is the finished length and then the diameter got an inch and 5/8 so I'll need to move up to 2in stock to do the Turning I sort my wood supply by side this is generally less than 2 ft uh this is very small pieces here I'm looking for Red Oak and it looks like I've got some here that's 2in stock so that'll work in some cases dust collection systems work in this case you can see here this really isn't catching much dust at all it's really important to control dust in a workshop because wood dust is a carcinogen and can cause permanent lung damage here you can see on my miter saw I've developed a dust collection system that really work works well [Music] so we've got the blank all roughed out here and you can see there are some larger chips left over but the majority of the dust and debris get sucked up through the dust collector I'm wearing a dark shirt and dark pants and I've got nothing on me at all typically people wear a turning smok to keep the dust off of them so I'm hoping that this prototype here is something that's going to work into a product on shelves of every wood working store if you want to learn more about the Journey of that go to the clean lathe YouTube channel subscribe and you get notified when we put videos up so the next step is to Mark out all the areas on the Turning here and I can turn the details [Music] sh [Music] oh [Music] there you have it it needs some sanding ideally I'd be using a skew on something like this but that's a chisel I haven't really learned how to use well yet um I've had some tear out when I do that but here I'll hold up the existing piece and you can take a look I can now take this off the lathe this has to be cut on an angle once I fit it in the seat and this needs to be trimmed off so I'll just cut them off Square so lift this out and take it to the workbench so here on the end as I said there's a sloping cut it's also rounded so that has to be fixed once we get to that part but here this is where the Tenon had broken off so I need to shape this Tenon to fit in the seat so pull out the seat and we'll start working there so this is the side here I'm working on this mortise and I just want to show you before I clean it out there's little pieces of wood stuck at the bottom there's a few here at the back but on this side we've got a nice clean round mortise so I'm happy with the shape of that and this is just again some of that funky mess that someone put in there it's going to take a while to clean that out so right here what we do is focus on this you can see the Tenon is slightly too large for the hole that's perfect this way I can work it down and get a nice tight fit got a nice clean mortise here but you can see around the edge here we've got some damage so I'm hoping the back post is going to hide that it's time to start shaping it so as I work the post in I want to sort of wiggle it around it is a little bit loose there and figure the direction that it wants to go so I can seat it but you can see here this curve here that's as far as it wants to go I need to work out some of it here but there's an important part first I need to figure out where the arm is going to attach on this and drill a hole to make sure it's all lined up so there are two posts here this one either goes this way or this one goes this way I think it's more likely this way the way I tell is the arm gets joined right in the middle of this band right there and underneath here that looks like where the dowel goes so it'll work like this so this is where I need to get that hole drilled first before I start shaping the back of this and cutting that out so there's another piece here that goes in and it's oh that's probably backwards it's notched so let's see if I can get that into the slot might be easier this way that's a pretty tight fit maybe I've got this wrong maybe it's this one H they're both pretty tight oh look at that some's glued little pieces of wood in here to try and take up that space this is not the way you Shore up a joint so I'll have to take that out it's probably going to be a little bit loose off to uh make that joint a better fit okay so now I can get this dowel in here position this piece that's not quite seated there there we go so now that this is fit here this is telling me where this is matching up and it needs to be in the middle of this area here that's flat so I have to take this down probably 5/8 deeper into the seat here on any restoration project there's a mix of Art and Science the art here is you can see there's some funky looking grain and I don't want that to be at the front so I want to orient this in a way that the chair is going to look most pleasing as possible from the front the science part is I need to line this up and make some critical Cuts so the first part here is I need to get that hole lined up in the right spot so that I can secure this that location will then determine how much I take off the back here to get the seat post seated in here properly and then the last part is at the top of the chair I need to cut this flat part here in the right orientation for that back to go on so it can be screwed on properly and then I need to shape the top at an angle and round it each one of these tooling operations if I mess it up I could end up having to return another piece on the lath I really don't want to do that so I'm going to take my time lay it out and work through it step by step so bring them back in here so I can look the whole thing together and this detail here is where my eye is drawn I can see that's here on this particular one um so if I rotate it this way you see here it almost looks like an eye looking at you that doesn't look that great turn it this way a little bit and that way the unpleasant part is back here you're not likely going to see that so I think that's the best orientation so hold the broken piece up here you can see this hole is drilled right in the center and then it's counter sunk at the back here so that's what I need to put in the center right here I'll mark the center here with tape and then I'll take this over to the drill press [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so now that this orientation is locked in here we got a nice tight joint this is where I need to cut back the slope so I can seat that more and I can close up this Gap once this gets seat it in properly what I'm going to do is put some masking tape here on this part and then here on this part and what I'm going to do is line up a line on here and this will tell me the orientation of this piece so when I have to take it off and put it back on I know I need to line up these lines here and then I don't have to keep reattaching the arm now I can estimate here on the 10 I need to take that back a little bit here bring it up this way do the same on the other side and that should provide support here while being able to fully seat that Tenon it's near the end of my workday and that's when I find I'm most likely to make mistakes so I don't want to be working when I don't have a clear mind on this piece because I don't want to make a mistake so what I'm going to do is set this aside and tomorrow morning I'll bring up my benchtop shave horse and then I can start shaping this and fitting in I'm also going to give ready for fixing Furniture live tonight uh we've got a live session where I'm here in my workshop uh participants can ask questions as we go through and tonight's topic is how to identify wood finishes if you're interested in participating in something like that this is part of our fixing Furniture Community you can go to fixing furniture.com and I'll leave a link in the video description if you've never seen one of these before this is a shave horse these are typically very large that you'd have like 6 feet in a bench but I've created a benchtop shave horse and what this does is allows you to clamp something down with foot power which means you've got two hands free to work now it's really important in this piece because what I need to do is hold this in place get my lines lined up here and then use a draw knife so this is a very sharp tool that allows me to come in here and sweep out that piece that I need get that angle and get it shaped exactly ly how it's going to fit in the chair it might be a little hard to see but here's one line here's another line I need to create a plane across there and come up here so what I'm going to do is just start by taking out a little bit on either side so rather than try to take out one big chunk and just gently cut out little sections as we go and then what I can do is I can flatten that out so we'll test fit this and see how it works I can already tell I have a fair bit to take off off so that's lined up here so I'm just starting to take apart that area so I need to go further up the Tenon and then out so the test fit here you can see this angle is working out well here this is getting seated much deeper but up here we're still not down far enough on the post yet that handle needs to come up a bit so a little more shaping left to do I'll give you closeup here this is what I've cut out with the draw knife so I've essentially extended the Tenon by cutting this away and forming a longer Tenon on it so it's something you can only do with hand tools it's not something you can do with a machine so let's give it another test fit and see what it's like so you can see it's much better seated down here and let's take a look at the top I'll get this arm lined up and set down and there we go I'll insert the screw here to lock this in place so I can use it to align the other parts and yes I'm using a Robertson screw here there are are screw caps that go on these so the screw will be concealed so I'm just using a modern screw now it's a fairly long screw when you're screwing into end grain of wood you need much longer uh thread grip than you do if you're uh screwing into something cross grain ah yeah nice tight fit so I'm going to turn this frontwards now we set the other parts on the front and we'll see how these are going to line up so what I'm seeing here is this side has to come down but the only way it's going to come down is this has to be seated in that Groove and with all the stuff that somebody had put in here huge chunks of wood there's just no opportunity for that to sit in so if I hold this roughly where it needs to be about there you can see this Tenon sticking out so there's a lot of room here that this needs to get down seated into the chair so I've got a lot of cleanup work to do so here's all the wood that I've taken out of here so far and we'll take a closeup look you can see here here it's meeting up almost where that original line was but there's a little bit right here there's a gap I think that that is supposed to sit down here and over here on this side there's also this Gap here so I'm thinking it's got to go down about a/ quar inch really to seat that properly and get that solid now I'll show you what I've got going on inside the slot here there's wood filler down here there's a piece of wood this way there's still some additional pieces of wood it's almost like just someone threw a bunch of scraps in there and threw some glue in and hope for the best I've never seen so much glue in one place it's just coming out in chunks so let's give this another test and there's a piece of Veneer at the front here I just need to pull up to get the back in so it's seating well right down here you can see that it's on that shoulder but over here it's still sticking up a bit and this post is sticking up a bit but it's touching at the back here so it's time to look at this mortise turn this around here and I did notice this earlier there's a previous repair here you can see there used to be a split and it looks like there's a nail hole that's been filled there I'll turn it around a little bit more and we take a look at the back there's a continuous piece that runs across this back here but unfortunately this has been notched out you can see here on this previous break someone order to fix this patched on another piece of wood and in order to get that on they've notched this apron or the seat rail so there's been some damage done here the mortise itself is also in pretty bad shape I'll take this Tenon it and we can take a look at it there's a lot of glue inside here and the fit is kind of sloppy meaning that the Tenon is moving around in there so I'm going to start by cleaning up the glue and see what we've got I put the Tenon back in here and it's touching on the inside here but you can see there's still a gap here so I need to trim some of that down to get that in there I'm not sure why that's not fitting properly but the other thing I've noticed too is if I move the chair back forward look at how much slop is in that mortise there's just really nothing preventing it from moving around so I think what I'm going to do is work on this area up here I'll attach this new piece get that cut in there and then that'll determine what our angle looks like down here and I really don't know I don't like using epoxy but this might turn into an epoxy pour so we'll line this up here and mark the bottom of my cut and then what I need to do is figure out where to draw the line on the top here now this is going to be a very difficult cut to make I don't want to do it with a handsaw because there's too much of a chance there's going to be some variation in that cut so what I need to do is figure out how I'm going to cut that on a table saw so I can get a perfectly machined line that will line up with this plywood jigs are a Woodworker's best friend so he saw me use this earlier it's for stabilizing a round piece and I think if I use this here that's providing a little bit of lift here because it's not perfectly flat and that will allow me to cut a straight line here if I add another block here to figure out what direction this needs to be I can line up that cut the table saw the way I need and I should be able to flip this out put it here and get my table saw cut so first thing I need to do is take off the blade guard so I can get through this process while seeing what I'm doing and the blade guard won't interfere with the work so there's the idea I just have to figure out how to secure this so it's not going to rotate or twist on me as I make the cut so it's safe and accurate I've attached this block here and when I line this up on my jig I end up with an even space all the way along between the piece and the blade so it tells me it's running parallel which is exactly what I want unfortunately when I put the new turning on it's not aligned the same way so you can see how there's a gap here and it's going to be cutting in here so I'm GNA have to use this jig to tweak this as I go along make a light cut test see how it works adjust it and make another light cut I'll have to progressively do that until I get the cut that I want for [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] right [Music] [Music] for well here's the moment of truth to see if it all comes together let's see how this comes together here yep nice straight line I do need a little bit of a notch further down here to get that the right height f the so the next part is to stain this post and I've already set the Grain on it that's why I've got black on here uh once I apply the acrylic brown stain it'll come through and look like this so I'll just take off my little marker here I've marked it on the Tenon so I know where it goes in I'm going to set it in place because I want to see the stain going on in relation to these other pieces here if you're interested in making one of these benchtop shave horses they're really compact I've got plans on my website I'll leave a link in the video description when matching staining it can be really tricky because here you can see in the arm I've got a lighter color down here where I need to repair the veneer there's some raay Flex here that are lighter and areas that are darker on the back it's a little bit different color as well so the best thing to do is stand it up in place use the old piece as a guide if you've got one um and that way when I apply the stain I can vary the intensity of it as I go through the process for I've now got the base coat applied so you can see from a color perspective it's looking pretty good but there are these dark areas on the turning that I need to darken in here otherwise this will look too new so this is where toning comes in so what I'm doing is using a dark stain and I'm just going to wipe it off in the brush and then I want to put it in this area here and then I'm just going to move it around my finger to sort of get that stain in there so I'll go across the chair and do this and get it toned in so it's looking much closer to the original while that stained dries what I'll do is turn this around and take these parts off and look at how to address this lifting veneer here to get res secured I've got an area about this big that needs glue underneath it and clamp down you can see how this is moving so what I'm going to do is cut it with a knife along the grain use some uh hide glue underneath it and a pallet knife to move that around and I've got some complex clamping on here to make sure I can get an even pressure on that curved surface so we'll start off by finding a green line here and what I'm going to do is open it up so I can access the surface below it if I stick this knife and you can see just how far that loose veneer is so it's a little pocket there if I go in from this side let's see the fire is it this way yeah it's pretty far that way too okay time to load up the glue so I've got a large syringe here I'm just going to give myself lots of glue to play with and this isn't toxic glue but I've got a glue uh glove on here because it can get really sticky okay so I can feel that the glue is tacky under there it's moving around what I need to do is work it to the extreme edges okay I think we're getting there okay so we're good for one side okay I'm going come at it from this side now step two cuz I want to make sure that that glue is has moved around you can hear the glue moving underneath okay so now what we're going to do I've got some foam here to help spread out the clamping pressure I've got some acrylic here that will do the same it'll help spread that pressure and then I have blocks of wood here so I'll clamp on each of these there's one so because this is curved as I add each block here it will help conform to the shape of the seat I'm going to let this sit overnight just to give it lots of time to cure I've got button plugs that I need to stain and I also have some research I want to do on this patent so I'll go through that we'll come back to this in the morning now these are are uh mushroom shaped button plugs so button refers to the top it's got a curve to it uh the mushroom refers to it's got a rabbit here so these are oak this is what I'm going to be using now there are different types of plugs uh this one here is a button top as well you can see it's curved um but it's tapered to go inside a hole this one here are these are ones I've made these are just tapered and they're meant to be cut flush to the surface once they're installed so a few different types of plugs but these Oak ones I'll get four of them out here stain them up and get them ready for the glue up of the chair after a lot of research I found the patent for this part I've got the diagram here so I'll set it down on the bench and we can take a closer look so on the diagram this is the part here that I've taken off the chair and these are some different views of that part so this is a patent to hold on the Springs so uh the base is a fixed base so this is called a platform rocker or a platform spring rocker you can see here it's got two uh stretchers here like I had previously glued the front is a little bit different here the top is obviously different but the idea here is that this chair is rocking back and forth so if we look at some of the details here we can see who the inventors are so we can see here the inventors were Arthur we and Adolf W scran so I've done further research on these two gentlemen and I did find that Adolf William scram uh was credited as the originator of the convolute spring for the rocking chairs in the obituary for aw scram it does outline here that he was the first manufacturer of platform rockers in the midwest us that was around 1888 um it does go on to talk about uh developing the idea of the convolute spring rocker and he continued to manufacture rocking chairs up until uh 1913 under the company named aw scram and Suns company now I have looked online and I found a few more of these rockers but there aren't that many that seem to exist out there um the ones that are the highest priced are between $300 and $400 uh this one in the condition that it's in um probably is not worth much at all uh because of the damage that was done on previous repair work so that's unfortunate but this has some special meaning for the owners so I'm restoring it here so that they can make much more use of it it's always interesting when I find a piece of History like this because we can date back the piece it's probably early 1900s this was produced um often times I've got furniture that has no identification in it and really it's just guesswork so what I'll do now is unclamp this piece and we'll take a look if you are looking at setting up your shop what I'd recommend is putting a clamp rack right beside your working area so you can see how easy this is for me to unclamp this get the clamps stored away just up here on the rack so I'm hoping that this is going to turn out as smoothly as I hope given the convex shape let's take a look yeah that's pretty good so just clean this off with clean water get any of that glue out that came out between the pores let's see yeah it's good and solid there oh there's a loose bit right here I can see that moving and what else oh out here on the perimeter there's a piece here so what I'll have to do is go through the same process here and here get those tightened down get them clamped up and we'll be good to go I've got that glued up so while I let that sit what I'm going to do is put the first coat of shellac on this post now I'm using Garnet shellac on here because I've got a dark wood I prefer to use Garnet shellac and you can see just how dark that liquid is so I've got on a bristle brush here and all I do is brush it on you don't want to overbrush this you basically want to apply it and let it sit it dries very very quickly so you can see the coat I put on up above here is dry already just between moving the camera and putting it on so that's bringing out the richness and the color in that piece I'll give you a closeup here you can see just how rich that color is once the garnish lock goes on again there's no shellock and there's shellock so it's fun to go through and transform a piece like this so I'll put the oil piece next to this and the dark tones are looking good the light tones are a little bit too dark here so I'm just going to take some 4 o steel wool rub that down a little bit take a little bit of the stain off and it should get me these light tones that I need so you can see now I've rubbed it down so it's much lighter than it was before so as I put this on I've now got a match on the Finish I have a few more coats of shellac to put on that post but I'll do that once the chair's assembled the last thing I need to do before assembly is clean up the joinery you can see here someone's patched on a piece of wood and there's gobs of glue everywhere so that needs to come off but once that's together I can get the chair assembled I am concerned about the back post here um it was a little bit loose before I trimmed it and got it further into the Morse so I need to make sure that that's solid so I know what adhesive I'm using if you'd like to support our fixing furniture YouTube channel you can go to fixing furniture.com and join our fixing Furniture Community there you've got access to have conversations with others about repairing Furniture as well as participate in fixing Furniture live where I'm live here in the workshop and we can have a conversation there are also a number of downloadable resource sheets including how to mix your own shellac okay all the joinery is cleaned up now so what I want to do is test the fit of this back and now I know I've got a strong support from this post post so I'm just going to take that out of the way and that'll allow me to judge how strong this connection is here so get it fully seated and yeah it's not that great okay so what I'm going to do here because of this movement here this is just way too much movement to make something secure is I'm going to use epoxy in here just to show you from the side here this is how much movement is in that joint normally I would never put epoxy in an antique chair but let me show you why I'm going to do that there's a huge void in here and in order to patch that void I'd have to take out a section of wood here and repair that mortise that mortise goes way down here in order to repair that it's going to take a fair bit of wood out of here I'm also dealing with a laminated plywood seat um you can see here it's previously been broken and you can see here it was align properly and when this was repaired someone decided to put on a mending plate of wood and in doing so they cut the apron of the seat rail here so there's already been a lot of damage done to this chair so I think given the uh low value of this chair and really wanting to make sure this is a repair that's going to last as long as possible filling that void with epoxy will make this rock solid and give it the best chance for survival going forward I'm already for the glue up and I got the screws that I was looking for from Kennedy hardware and I ordered this as well this is something that's pretty unique uh Kenedy Hardware has a bunch of skeleton keys that you can order a whole set so have you ever tried to open a lock that you couldn't get into well here are some skeleton keys that will help you get into locks it's really hard to find keys for old locks but with a set of skeleton keys now I've got a whole bunch of options to be able to open the next lock I encounter I'll leave a link to these and the screws in the video descript deson now I need to let this dry a little bit longer so I'm going to set this aside when I come back it's time for the glue up I haven't glued anything together yet I'm doing what's called a dry fit I put the screws in the back here and here and what I'm doing is just making sure all these parts fit properly when I used to design and build Furniture dry fitting is a critical part of the final construction process to make sure everything fits together well and it's a good thing I've done this because on this part of the connection here there were glue blocks and that's because it was a gap so I've trimmed these parts to fit properly but I've also realized there's a problem down on the sides the arm post here is attached with a screw but on here someone has refinished this whole surface and it's got a finish so if I put glue on here it's not going to stick to that finish so what I need to do is position it in the right spot mark it out with tape and then take that finish off if I don't glue this properly what happens is this is just going to want to rotate on that screw this is a critical part of the structure that helps support the back so I'll screw this in place with my brand new screw and then take masking tape and Mark it at the area so I know where to take the finish off so I just do this to roughly Mark out the area and then what I can do is take smaller pieces of tape Mark the inner areas so that's now down to barewood and that is what glue needs to stick to you can see a little bit of the finish here I just left a bit of a margin I might need to touch up the odd spot but I think I'll be okay I'm finally ready for the glue up so I'm using High glue for all the joints except for this back post here and that will be putting with epoxy so because I'm using epoxy I have to be wearing an organic cartridge respirator and what that does is protects my lungs from the chemicals that are used in epoxy adhesives so I'll be strapping this on and getting to work [Music] he oh [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do the glue is now cured it takes 24 hours for this epoxy to come to full strength so it's now rock hard and it's time for me to test it out while the glue was curing I went through and I put another coat of garnet shellac on the post and you can see here it really does now blend in it's got the right color and right Sheen to match perfectly with the chair you'd never know this was a new addition to the chair I've also added on the screw caps so they're all set to go there is a bit of a void on the right post here where I used epoxy so I'll fill that with epoxy putty and stain that to match but I'll do that off camera if you're interested in learning about epoxy putty it's wonderful stuff and learning how to shape it I'll leave a link at the end of the video to a video that shows everything about epoxy putty so I'm going to put this together we'll get it inside and I can test it out let's give it a try oh it's a very smooth Rock So this rocking chair is now ready to go back to the customer this antique will last for years to come now and my next project is to work on these two stools that came out of a bank they have sentimental value for the customer they'd like them set to the same height there's some repairs to do on them and some finish to touch up as well I've got some distressing to do to disguise all the repairs so you'll see that in a video coming up here's the video here on how to use epoxy putty and how to shape it and thank you for watching fixing furniture [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fixing Furniture

Views: 19,766

Keywords: furniture repair, woodworking, furniture restoration, restoration, how to, wood glue, fixing furniture, antique, rocking chair, convolute spring rocker, spring rocker, spring rocking chair, platform rocker, platform rocking chair

Id: od5ZxlSgHoc

Length: 71min 41sec (4301 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024