Bad Furniture Repair and How to Fix It #2 - Wood Furniture Restoration

welcome back to our workshop today i've got the split leg that came off a chair i've got several pieces here that someone tried to glue on before which makes this an even more difficult repair and i've got a broken dowel to deal with and a split leg over here so two split legs some broken pieces a broken dowel how do you fix that stay tuned 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 what i need to do is take that apart repair it and put it back together so i can get this chair in working order we give you tips to make your repair projects easier [Music] let's get into the workshop and start fixing furniture where do you start a project like this well i like to start with the easiest part first i've got two legs that are broken one is split and the other one is broken multiple parts i'm going to work on the split piece because it's going to teach me a little bit about the form and how the wood is working it's going to make it easier to work on the more difficult one so i'll get this chair laid on his back we'll take off the leg and take a look now this is one heavy chair this is probably 50 to 60 pounds in weight really heavy for a chair this size under here i can see i've got a split and it looks like maybe a split on this other side too so this might be similar to the other leg just at an earlier stage in the braking process so let me take this out and we'll see what it looks like so looking at it this is the front part here you can see this is wiggly so this needs to come apart and get fixed this one here doesn't seem to have any movement to it there's a finishing nail in here and here and the seams seem tight on the front and on this side here so i think that one's going to hold well it's this one here that definitely needs to come off to repair that so i need to pry this apart i'm just going to use an awl stick it in the hole here and then pry it up see oh yeah well that was pretty easy okay so wow someone repaired this with a finishing nail and a glob of glue right at the end there's actually a little bit of glue on that front edge too so this is a lesson of how not to repair something what you need to do is fully load up that break with glue make sure you clamp it tight and you're going to get a tight joint so no wonder this failed the reason i'm showing this to you is so you can learn how to do something right the first time as you can see here i'm having to undo someone's mistake and oftentimes in my workshop the undoing takes more time than the actual repairing itself please make sure that you're doing this the right way and if not seek out a professional that can do it for you so i'm a little puzzled by this humpty dumpty is not going back together again i've got a nice tight fit up here i've got a tight fit here a pretty good fit here but the front there's this overhang and the only thing i can think of is this looks like some poor finishing job these legs have been refinished this must have had a crack in it and it was opened up so this profile was sanded over so i can glue this together so i've got nice tight joints everywhere but i've got this overhang here on this piece so i'm going to have to smooth that out after the glue up so the other challenge for the glue up is there's no way to naturally clamp this um to get a clamp on here that's actually going to hold it in the right direction so i'm going to have to create a call over here to hold this and a call down here on this curved area so i can get two clamping surfaces that are parallel to each other i've made a few videos on vector clamping and that's what this is all about it's about getting clamping pressure that's perpendicular to the part that needs to be glued so a call is just something that goes between the clamp and your piece of work and what i'm doing here is just tracing out this part so i can prepare another band saw and get it ready so do this on both sides and then get ready to clamp so here's how the call works this one is going down here and the clamp here is simply just to hold the call on now this piece needs to go up here and this is the call to hold that on and this clamping surface at the top is parallel to the clamping surface on the bottom so there i've got perfect clamping pressure i just have to make sure that when i'm gluing that up i get the right alignment and we're good to go so we'll undo this apply the glue and then we'll have one of the three broken corners dealt with now it's important to put glue on all the surfaces you want to maximize the strength of this break and the only way you can do that is to make sure you've got the maximum amount of glue coverage in the break wherever you don't get glue you won't get strength i'll show you a close up here so you can see glue squeeze out here and here all the way around there's a little bit there so that tells us we've got enough glue in that joint that's going to hold once it dries i'm just going to add one more clamp at the bottom here and sort of use it like a kickstand on the bike and i'll just set that aside i've had some viewers ask what i do to clean out the brush after i do a glue up and it's as simple as soap and water so i'll go clean this out and i'll come back and we'll start working on the dowels please give us a thumbs up so more people will see our videos this broken leg here needs to be centered on a dowel so this helps provide support and then these screws just hold it in place so i need to drill that dowel out i'll put that in the vise and show you how that's done now clamping on my vise isn't that difficult because what i've done is lined the jaws with pine so this is soft and what it does is it compresses as i get a piece of hardwood in here so this just gives me a stable place to work on this dowel i pull up my drill bits and grab a smaller drill bit what i want to do is work at getting as close to the center as that as possible so i'll chuck this in the drill when we get started so just use my thumb to guide where this drill is going to go and it's difficult when you've got broken end grain like this to try and get it in the center [Music] but what i find is if you start the drill and just angle it to the direction you want it to go you get reasonably close this doesn't have to be precise but the closer to the center the easier this is going to be [Music] now did you hear that clunk that was getting through the end of the dowel and there's a bit of space there before i got to the bottom of the hole so that's a good sign because it's going to make this easier to pull out i'm going to change my drill bit here i'm going to go up to a larger size and what i'm looking to do is really take out the core of the dowel i don't want to touch the edge of the hole at all i want to stay away from the edges [Music] okay that's through now it's really difficult to tell what the edges of this are because of all that glue in there so i'm going to stop at this point normally i'd drill a little bit wider with a larger bit but i want to make sure i'm not going to ruin that hole so the next step is to get out a chisel and start breaking that out to get the rest of the dowel out what i want to do is preserve the shape of the hole so by splitting down the grain what i'm doing is breaking that piece up into smaller pieces this is something that allows me to twist the chisel and get those pieces loose and then pull them out so with everything broken away you can see it's a pretty clean hole now there is still some debris on the edges and i need to clear that out with the drill bit now we can switch over to the half inch drill bit that's the size for this hole here and what i'm going to do is run the drill in reverse if i run it forward i could end up changing the direction of that hole what i want to do is get to the bottom of the hole as best i can and then i'll run it forward to clear out any debris on the edges [Music] okay so that's in the hole and it's the direction that the hole wants to go put it forward and then clear it out now i don't stock half inch dowel pins in my shop but i do carry dowel of that size so i'll use this for the repair so we'll put the dowel on here and we get a nice snug fit i'm going to go through the same process on the bottom of the chair here and clear out that broken dowel [Music] so we've got a nice tight fit here as well and with that problem solved we can now move on to the broken part of the leg to repair this leg what i have to do is glue these parts back on the problem is they've got glue on them and let me bring this up closer and refocus it there is glue on the surface here and glue on this surface here you can see that shine and because it wasn't clamped i can't get a tight fit on this you can see there's actually light in there what i need to do is scrape off as much glue as possible to get these as tight as possible but because there's glue on there and not bare wood i'm not going to have a good joint so i'm going to have to use epoxy on this because it's the only glue that will hold when there's a void like that now the epoxy is certainly going to hold this together i'm not concerned about that coming apart again but i'm not fixing the root cause of the issue the problem here is this was put together with a flathead screw which has a triangular shape to it so when that triangle is forcing up into the wood because of the slight movement in the chair it's creating a wedge effect and a splitting effect just like an axe with firewood so what i need to do is make sure i have a flat bottom hole and a screw that's got a flat surface and that way the screw action is just clamping it's not forcing with a wedge and splitting the wood again i've cleaned up this break as much as i can and it's nice and tight there it's a little bit loose here there's a slight gap at the front but you see how easily this moves it's because there's no grain to interlock it's all been sealed off by glue so that's why i need epoxy to get this in the right position and hold it and it will secure both those pieces together i'm going to use the same calls that i used here to glue up the epoxy so i'll just get these ready first thing i'll do is put the bottom call on here and get ready for that epoxy as i i only have a few minutes to work with the epoxy so that needs to happen quickly so put that on here i'll get my kickstand out and the epoxy i'm using is jb weld it's a five minute epoxy it comes in a two part tube and there's a bit of a trick to reusing this multiple times if you put a line here on this lid when you twist it off just like this that way you're going to line it up and you're not going to mix it up and get the resonant hardener tips mixed up so it's going to be easy to open up you can see this tube i've almost used it right to the end so that's the trick put a line on there and then you know when you put the lid on you're getting it the right way so it's an easy two-part distribution here i like this because i can get it in very small quantities and you just need to make sure you mix this thoroughly and you also want to make sure you're using this in a well ventilated area this has a very potent smell to it so you don't want to be doing this in a closed space so get mixed up here and then apply the epoxy so i like applying it to both sides that way if there's little grooves that aren't necessarily touching the opposite piece they get epoxy in them as well so we'll sandwich that in place the key part i want to wipe up is on the face here parts that are visible make sure i've got it lined up in the right spot and you see how it wants to move around it's uh it's quite slippery okay so the call goes on here and then i can clamp it well that glue up didn't go the way i thought it would the epoxy being such a slippery surface i end up just having to hold it in place fortunately this is five minute epoxy so it didn't take that long to set it so i glued on this part here and i glued on this as well so i now have a solid piece that i can work on getting in the chair i do have a bit of finishing to work to do on this piece here because of the alignment problem that i had at the front so i'll work on that and then what we'll do is drill the right holes get the right screws in here and get this chair back together here's a close-up of the misalignment at the front here you can see a little bit more like this so i'm going to put that in the vise and get out my spoke shave and we'll true that out hey i just need to sand the profile here that i file down and just blend in a little bit of this finish with the sandpaper and then we're ready for the stain be sure to go to our website and subscribe to our newsletter for links to new videos workshop tips and more now back to fixing furniture i'm going to show you my same process using acrylic stains so i've got a palette here i can use to mix up the colors i've just propped this up here so it's easily accessible and i've got some paint brushes here we'll pull out some colors and see what we can do to get them to match this might work this is a spice color we'll see oh no that's going to be too red this is antique walnut i use this one a fair bit it's probably a little bit too dark but i'm going to get a little bit of color out here on the palette and this is golden walnut no golden wheat that's closest to what we need so put a little bit of color out here as well so we can already tell that this is going to be a little bit too light so i'm just going to take some of this color put it over here i'm just going to grab a dab of that dark color and we'll try it yeah it used to be a little bit darker good color for over there nice thing about these water-based stains is you can layer them on if you get it on too thick you just wipe it off so they're really easy to work with so let that dry for a minute and then put a second coat on i wiped off the excess stain and this has dried for a little bit so what i'm going to do is just mix up some more and i think what i need to do is go a little bit darker with it but as you can tell here this mark here this was a poorly done stain job so a little imperfection is going to be hidden with just the nature of how this piece was finished last time it does look a little bit lighter but once the clear coat goes on that it darkens up so i can clean up what i've got here and the great thing about working with acrylics is this just wipes up with water so it's a great cleanup non-toxic so for the stain i need to let it dry before i put the clear coat on and that will add the sheen like the rest of the leg so i'll set that aside and in the meantime here where i epoxied there's a small crack so i'm going to fix that with burn-in sticks burner sticks are fairly easy to use it's the burn-in stick a soldering iron a card and then using a microfiber cloth to buff it out i've got a full video on how to do this you can check it out in the video description below the easiest way to deal with these screws where i've got a tapered edge here that wants to split the wood is to add a number eight washer so this washer will give me a flat clamping surface and as that screw is tightened it won't want to force that wood to break a forstner bit will leave a perfectly flat hole at the bottom so i'm just going to alter these holes a little bit so i've got a nice spot for that washer to set i'm ready to install the dowel here and what i want to do is measure the length of how long i want to cut it inside this hole so rather than measure something that could be going to the center of the hole i want to see where the dowel naturally goes and then what i do is take the leg and do the same thing and if i add those two lengths that'll give me the length and then i'll take off just a little bit to leave a bit of space i'm just scraping off any old glue that might prevent this from getting a nice tight joint and we're ready to put it together so what i'm going to start with is here putting the dowel in so put a bit of glue in use the back of the paintbrush to distribute the glue all the way around the inside of that hole then coat the dowel make sure you've got lots of glue on there i'm just going to glue the dowel into the leg and not into the chair that way if someone needs to take this apart in the future they can do that so that's in now we can put it in place and screw it in these chair legs are now rock solid the key to this was understanding why they were breaking and not only fixing that but also repairing the cracks so this chair is back in working order and if you're new to our channel we've got over 50 videos on repairs like this that you can learn from our purpose is to build this community a supportive community around furniture repairs if you haven't subscribed yet you can click over here click on the bell icon and you get notified every time we publish a video thanks for watching fixing furniture [Music]

Channel: Fixing Furniture

Views: 17,898

Keywords: furniture repair, woodworking, furniture restoration, bad repair, chair leg, epoxy, wood stain, Saman, acrylic wood stain, water-based wood stain

Id: 3gylCDkTV_Y

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021