How to Repair a Broken Rocking Chair - a Restoration by Fixing Furniture #Leather

welcome back to our Workshop today I'm working on this project that has a number of issues with it the most obvious one is the letter c has broken there are some loose Parts on here looser than I've ever seen on a chair before so I need to address that the back is loose so I need to take this whole chair apart and re-glue it I also noticed there are some finishing nails peeking out from the underneath this black finish so I'm going to have to deal with those as well now I'm not a fan of painted furniture but this piece was painted so long ago you can actually see the wood underneath because the paint's wearing off it's got a unique look and the customer wants to keep it that way so my job here is to make this chair more solid repair the seat and get it back in working order 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 to repair this rocking chair seat I've imported some leather from the US this is from Van Dyke's this comes in a 14 inch circle and a 12 inch circle unfortunately this is a 13 inch circle so I'm going to have to trim this at some point to get it fit in the seat I'll get to that a little bit later but the first thing I need to do is take this chair apart I want to be able to work on the seat on a flat surface so I can do the leather work I've got a bunch of tacks here I don't want to be hammering that as this chair is moving around now as I mentioned these parts here are extremely loose I think there's a crack that's going through on each of these sides it looks like there's some finishing nails holding it on so it's going to be interesting to take this apart and see what we've got when I work on furniture like this it's a little bit like renovating an old house once you start stripping back the layers you never know what you're going to find so we'll get this flipped over start taking it apart now underneath here let's see what's going on here we've got an H stretcher so this is the middle of the H these are the sides of the H and I can tell here there are finishing nails holding in this stretcher here so I'll need to take those out before taking that apart or I'll break the wood and the chair base oh yeah it's pretty loose you can see here I'll just push that back down with all that dust that came out that's definitely been in there a long time so I'm going to take out my spreader clamps just flip the clamp over here and gently take this apart so I know this one is loose now when you're taking apart a chair like this you want to make sure you're taking apart the front legs first for the back legs second and the reason is that back legs are typically splayed backwards so they're on a bit of an angle the front ones will come out easier and once they're loose then you can pop the back ones out okay this one's all the way out now foreign so what I'm doing is just moving it a little bit in the mortise to ease it out if you try to do this with a mallet you could end up breaking something okay cloud of dust coming out of that one too now it's just the back tip foreign and then we can work on these through tenons so the back here and the arm are held on with a Tenon there's a cut in it and there's a wedge I need to take the wedge out to take them off oh and there's actually a crackle along here it looks like there's some glue in there I'll have to see if that's loose but that might explain why this is such a loose Tenon here so I'll get up the drill I'll start taking out these wedges I'm not going to work on the wedge here and the wedge is this direction so when a wedge goes into a chair it can't be the same direction as the green because it would split the grain so it's perpendicular to the grain if you're ever having a challenge finding it you can scrape the surface down a little bit but I'll work this one out work my way around the chair and get these wedges out so we can take it apart and as I'm pushing through here there's a bit of a release so it's telling me I'm getting through the wedge and into the empty space behind the wedge [Music] foreign s out so I just use a dowel in my mallet foreign get the arms out first it seems to be working better and then I'll do the back foreign get too carried away I want to label all these parts because each of these have different wear marks I want to make sure I Orient them the same way so I'm just going to put tape around them I'm going to Mark the inside here as to where it is and then I'll label the part so this one's going to be three and then I'll do two and one and that way I know exactly how to orient these when I put them back in now I'll spin this around and the arms are held on by two screws so I'll take these out so the arms off now and you can see here this is where I drilled out the wedge so I'll have to clean that up when I put it back together again but this part it's really loose but this is also the one that has a finishing nail in it so I'll have to take care of that to make sure I can re-glue this and tighten that back up I can now flip this over and take the back off so the same process I just use a dowel here and tap the end of the Tenon and this will just pop out foreign yeah it's loose as well so I'll have to label these parts so I can reglue them [Music] this Tenon wants to slide out everywhere except for right there see the finishing nail I hate it when people do this they're holding the Tenon in there but it's just wearing the furniture pieces so I think I can slide the Tenon out and maybe break a little bit bit of wood there but I've got a really long Tenon here so I'm not concerned about that I'll get the seat out of the way and then I've got the spreader clamps in here so you can see how easily that wants to open up but that nail just won't let it release so with some even pressure on either side here ah it's cracked well I judged that one wrong I've got a split here now so I've got to pull out that now the only way to take out a finished nail is to get around it by making more damage so I'm going to drill a couple holes here and get it pulled out foreign so now I've got a bit of space around the finishing nail I'm just going to take my all and try to move that into the open space and see if I can grab it I think I need some Leverage foreign you see the damage I'm doing to the wood here this is why it's not a good idea to put a finishing nail in the joint of furniture there we go ah so now this should just slide apart okay so there's one side let's see this other side yeah that's a little bit loose and here huh we've got another finishing now like I said sometimes working on old furniture it's like working on old houses you end up with a few surprises foreign that one's loose and this one it actually isn't loose it's tight so I'm going to leave this joint intact this one I'll re-glue and we'll put that back together when it's time to reassemble the chair before I set the chair back aside I want to glue up this break I've got up my gluing supplies here dental floss and a syringe and I'll put a finishing nail in here and open up the crack and get some glue in there so I'm going to use the back of my plier handles get underneath there and that should yeah allow me to open up the crack so I don't have a lot of space here but enough that I can work in some glue I don't think I can get dental floss in there but I can certainly get a syringe in because this crack is so thin what I'm going to have to do is switch out the tip that I normally use for one that's finer but first I've got to load up the glue I'm using PVA glue here because I want a permanent Bond I don't want something that's reversible so stay away from the hide glue because that can be reversed I can put this tip on and with one hand open up the crack on the other hand inject the glue so if I rotate this piece you can see there's glue in the crack and then I release the pressure and you can see all the glue squeeze up so that'll make a great Bond I've got a clamp here so what I'll do is take the nail out clean off the squeeze out and then clamp it up there will be more squeeze out as I clamp this that's normal and that's actually telling you you've got enough glue in the joint that you're going to get a good strong join you can't put something together like this without clamping it this glue PVA requires a number of different things you need to have a tight joint you need to make sure that you've got enough glue in the joint and you also need clamping pressure if you forget the clamping pressure you won't get a quality Bond you can see here I've got some glue squeeze out on the top of this crack most of it will fall inside the mortise okay so I can set that aside now I just need to clean up my syringe so I'll go and do that you just rinse it out with water I let some water sit in it for a little while and keep pushing it out and you can reuse these again and again so let's see if these pieces come apart oh yeah there's some movement here so I don't see any finishing nails in this so it's just going to take a bit of muscle to pull this out but it doesn't want to come out okay I'll put some white vinegar in the joint here let that soak in that'll break down the high glue and that should come apart now on this one there is a finishing nail and this is really loose so I've got to take that one out foreign foreign foreign I find it a real shame that I have to damage the surface here to pull out a finishing nail but there really isn't a better way to do this if you do know of a better way I'd love to hear about it in the comments let's see if this piece here is ready to come apart oh there we go the magic of white vinegar well the vinegar is still wet I'm just going to scrape off the glue because it's nice and soft you can see it here in my scraper also Wipe Out the inside of the mortise here to get that glue out as well you can see there's some residue there so I'll let the vinegar dry everything will harden up and it'll be ready for the glue up I want to share something with you where this nail was through this Tenon I'm just going to put this back together again and look how loose this is so this was moving around and loose but you can actually see dust coming out of here because there's so much wear and what happens is when you put a nail in here it certainly keeps the joint together but what it does is it just allows that piece of wood to continue to wear and now I've got a slightly loose joint this one isn't too bad but I am concerned about the openings in the seat and what I might have to do to widen those tenons to eliminate the movement I'll set these parts aside and what I want to do now is take the base apart there are finishing nails here and here that I can see so we'll pop those out and see how the rest of this will come apart thank you with the nails out here I can see how this will come apart this joint here is very loose there's a paint drip there not a nail okay so I'll see if I can expand this across this way pull this apart I'll go up here that's just splaying the legs put one under here okay that's part and then up here do the same thing if you spread these apart you might end up breaking the mortises here so it's really important that you give it balanced pressure so that you're separating the pieces in a way that the perpendicular to that joint so with that apart I can check for loose parts so that's not loose that's not loose so all of that is solid I'll leave that together on this side see this should be loose so what I'm going to do is get my tape and just Mark these parts so I can get them oriented the same way when I put them back together again so this one is tight I can't really loosen that at all and you have to be careful with small pieces like this because they can be very fragile so I'm going to leave that one intact this is the one here that's loose but it's uh firm in the bottom here so I have to separate that these two joints over here they're good and solid so ideally I leave these two alone I need to pull this out to get glue into that so I'm going to put this in the vise and see if I can work that apart my spreader clamps can't fit in here so what I need to do is see if I can gently coax this piece apart using a vise like this is a great holding tool because I'm using the weight of the bench for resistance I think it is coming apart lift this up take a look yeah and it's separating it's the thing I have to be careful of is the other joint still intact if this releases and I pull it rapidly I could break the joints so that's loose there now okay with that leg off let's see this oh yeah this does come apart okay and this one there actually is a little bit of play in it let's see if I can get that apart too wow that one's tough I'll put some vinegar in it and then set it aside and I'll be able to get that apart and what I'll do is get out the seat and we can take a look at the leather now I need to take off the leather seat here and I noticed that I think there are some loose joints on these boards here so I'm not sure if the orientation of this leather seat is going to be important for me but I'm just going to put a mark there just in case so take this off just get out my tack lifter and start pulling the tax out unfortunately some of the heads of the tax came out so I can either nail in those stems or I can take them out and I like to take them out the tool I use for this is rather uncommon there are fencing pliers these pliers have a number of functions on them but you can see they've got a curved head here they're great for grabbing onto that nail and being able to just pull it out so you don't need something with a head on it they come out that easy when I've got scrap metal like this what I do is I store it up and then I give it away to scrap metal dealers that way it's getting reused for something else and not going into the landfill now I can see if the seat's going to come apart but I'd like to ask you first if you're enjoying this video please give it a thumbs up to support our Channel so before I take these apart I just want to show you there's an opening here and here here and here and it might be difficult to see in the light but there's actually a slight line right here see if I can get that in the light there and this is where the loose mortises so the Tenon that goes in here wasn't tight and it looks like there's Nails in the end here here you can see there's a crack here on the side same thing so off to see if these need to come apart or what do I need to tighten the Tenon before I put that back in a little block that's come out here so let's see if it comes apart so as I'm wiggling this you can see it's starting to open up and can I see through there yeah there's a dial here there's another one there so I'll continue to open this up I'll open up the other side as well and these should easily come apart so I'll put a spreader clamp in here it'll help provide some pressure yeah look how easily that's coming apart so these definitely needed to get re-glued foreign I'm using a scraper here it's rather thick and it's great for Levering Parts apart like this don't be tempted to use your chisel and potentially damage it when doing this okay and then when I get to a thicker part I've got wedges here that I can put in and that that one's actually not the right dimension and this will just help me take them apart okay so there's the first part I'll just go through and label these and then take the back parts off as well having a part I can now inspect the pieces and on this crack here it's not moving at all there's a bit of a gap right there so that Gap when this was glued together explains why this Tenon is loose so I'm going to have to tighten up that Tenon when I put this back together again and you can see there's another finishing nail here I'll need to take that out and then we can glue this back together now before I glue this back together I want to make sure that these dowels are tight so that's where fencing pliers come in as well they've got a great way to grip around a dowel Without Really compressing it so I can test and make sure that none of these are loose let me see this one back here seemed like it might have been loose no that one's tight how about this one yeah that one's loose so I want to make sure I get that glued in there properly so I don't have a loose joint the other thing I need to do before I clean this up is just to take the old glue off there's really nothing on the dowels here except for the ends so I just need to clear those off just to make sure they're not going to get in the way when I try to glue everything together and this glue was really crunchy and that's indicative of high glue if I were to put some vinegar on that you'd see how it would dissolve actually why don't I give that a try and show you I'll put this High glue here and I'll add some vinegar to it I'll let this sit here and dissolve in the middle of that vinegar I'll do the glue up and we'll come back and take a look at it so what I'm using here is hide glue h i d e and it's important to use hide glue when you're gluing things together because it's reversible so you can take things apart so I just use an artist brush to get the glue and all the mortises and then I use the paint brush side to paint the dowels and that makes sure I've got enough glue on absolutely everything so back here on this section for example the dowels came out on both sides so I'll just quickly put glue on each of the pockets now I'm working in a cold Workshop as winter time right now and I keep my shop about 10 degrees Celsius and this liquid High glue this is a tight Bond height glue and this one is Old Brown the tight Bond will gel up at this temperature so I just keep it in my back pocket and that makes sure that it's thin enough that I can work with it I keep a bottle in the house where it's room temperature and that way if I do need it I've got it at the working temperature I need with the old brown high glue you do need to heat it up simplest way to heat it up is make a pot of boiling water and put some hot water in a mug and then put the container in there and that'll warm it up enough that you can work with it you can actually get a little heater for it a mini crock pot will work I've got one that if I need to be out here in the shop using that high glue a lot I'll just get that turned on and let it sit as I need it this old brown high glue is really good for working with veneers it's a really thin viscosity I enjoy working with it on end green like this there really isn't a whole lot of holding power but I like to put glue on here because I think every little bit helps put a little bit here a little bit on here the nice thing about hide glue as well because it's a lubricant so that joint goes together very very quickly it just slides in the hole so we'll do this all the way around and then we'll clamp it up these clamps can bend a little bit and cause a bit of a dishing so I'll put one more across here prevent that from happening and here you can see I've got some glue screws out that's telling me I've got enough glue in the joint then I'm going to make a good Bond now let's take a look at this glue when it plays it between my fingers it actually makes them stick together so you can tell the vinegar has broken down the glue and that's why it works so well taking Furniture apart as the glue sets up here I need to figure out how to get this 14 inch leather Circle down to a 13 inch leather Circle to fit in here so I haven't done leather working before I've done a little bit of research the first thing I want to do is make a template because this just seems to move around too much so I'm going to start with some cardboard first I'm going to use box board from a cereal box and if you haven't seen a packaging from Canada this is typical we'll get English on one side and on the back we've got French Canada is a bilingual country so all of our packaging is bilingual so I'll just open this up large box board is great because it can provide you with a rigid template that's easy to cut so in theory if I trace the circle put on the seat it should fit but I'd rather check the theory on cardboard than the product that I already purchased so I think if I turn this upside down that should preserve the shape rather than trying to flatten it out oh and I have a Mark here where is it tells me the direction so right here this is going to be my reference line as I mentioned earlier I don't know if I need that reference line but I'm going to get it anyway so I'm just going to go all the way around it and it's interesting as I go around it it's not a perfect circle there's actually some humps and bumps on this so maybe I don't need to get too precise with it so let's give it a try I'll line up this Mark although this is upside down right now there's a spot here that's not touching so it's cut a little bit short I wonder if I put it this way you know that point here foreign yeah it does fit better okay so I need to fit this around got a piece sticking up here so I need to cut around that probably about there and we'll see if we can get this to fit okay it's too tight around here it's a little bit loose there too tight here so I'll just need to go around trim this up and get a good fit I'm nervous working on this piece of leather because if I mess it up it's going to cost me money and it's going to cause a project delay for the customer so I really want to make sure I get this template right before I start cutting it okay took a bunch of trial and error but I've got it in here there's one spot here that is cut a little bit short so I'll just have to cut a little bit wider around that spot the next thing to do is to orient this design and this is a dove with an olive branch so I need to figure out does it look better this way or this way what's the top so I've done a little bit of research here just by pulling up some pictures of does and it seems like the head is extended a little bit bodies about 45 degree angle so I think this flower here is the top so with this flower at the top here 's a preview of what it'll look like if I put this on just around the edge here the leather is a little bit thicker than the old leather so I'm going to have to round the edge of that leather after I cut it so I'll lay the leather down here is right there lining up with the top of the template and then I want even spacing all the way around and now I'll tape it on now to get the best cut possible I need to put a new blade in my knife one of these clean Edge on this all set to go so it's going to take two rounds to cut through this leather I've been watching YouTube videos about leather in preparation for this project well I don't have experience but if you're seeing something here and you've got some tips please put them in the comments that will help our viewers as they're learning new skills and that's really what our channel is all about is learning skills for furniture restoration and repair my feeling is there's a lot of opportunity to save furniture that currently is going to the landfill so I love more people learn this skill so we can save Quality Furniture foreign looking good so just keep going around the reason I put so much tape here is that I want that template once all these sides are cut to stay in place so I'll just keep working my way around cutting through the tape foreign here let's see how it fits does need a little bit of trimming but I'll do that with a sander now a surprise to learn that letter can be worked just like wood so it can be sanded and shaped so I just need to clean off my sanding wheel here and then we'll be ready to go so as I fit this I can see I've got the odd High Point and this is where I want to use the sander to take it down but I don't want to draw on the letter so I'm just going to put a piece of blue tape here and indicate with my white pencil or I need to take it down roughly there and there and I'll shape this fit it and work my way around the circle so when I work on a sanding wheel like this the center of it is moving the slowest the outside is moving the fastest so out here if I were to sand at the outer edge it would be very aggressive I'm going to sand right here and that's going to give me a nice slow sanding speed to be able to take that hump down and not over correct it thank you so bring it in here and give it a test and there's a bit of a gap here still a bit of a gap here so I need to sand that down just a little bit more to get it just right that's a nice tight fit the more I'm sanding the leather the more comfortable I'm becoming with it it is just like working with wood I've now got this the way I want it but you can see there's a light edge to it here and the leather is sitting slightly proud of the chair so what I need to do now is bevel the edge so beveling the edge in Wood I typically use a plane draw a line on each side and then work on a 45 degree angle on leather you use something called a skive so I've got one here and what I'm going to do is run it around the edges here and what that does is put a bevel on it it'll transition from the leather that's a little bit higher down to the seat I'm going to start by working on the back here because this is literally the first time I've used one of these tools I'll just bevel the back Edge there's a little bit of furring here that's happened because of the sanding process so I'll try it here first and then move on to the front here's a close-up of the tip you can see it's got a sharp edge right in the middle it's smooth down here so this part here is what I rub on the leather on a 45 degree angle doesn't seem that sharp maybe you just drop it first so I'm strapping it to get that edge really Keen really sharp I just purchased this foreign okay let's give it a try this is a bit of a challenge to use that's it I think part of it is working on padding so let's get the padding out of the way foreign well you can see I don't have a high level of comfort with the stool yet there foreign wow this might have been easier to learn for the first time on a straight edge but I have to keep applying pressure as I go around that curve foreign it's a little challenging [Music] so here's where that furring was happening oh there we go well I think it might need a larger bevel so I'm going to put a pencil Mark right here I'm going to try a larger skive and see how that works this is a two millimeter I was using a millimeter and a half so let's see so it's giving it a more rounded look let's give it a try so that's certainly getting the bevel down to the wood I think that's the right size so I like the way I was sort of chiseling it around a little bit at a time so I think I'm going to use the one and a half first on the front and then follow up with the two okay so I've got the 1.5 and I'll turn them back here nice and gentle oh it's actually much easier on the front huh let's see how this fits now line this up here okay I think that'll work well you see the edge here it's a little bit fuzzy what I need to do is burnish that edge and what that'll do is give it a finished look like the surface I also need to somehow color The Edge so I don't have this light strip to get this raw leather looking like the finished leather I could go and purchase some leather products but then I'd have to do some color matching and try to figure that out this leather is behaving a lot like wood and I use five different staining processes for raw wood and repairing wood so I'm going to use one of those techniques I'm going to use dye stain I've got my color wheel here to match up the color I'll pull up my dye stains and I'll do up a sample on this raw leather and see if I can get it to work so on the color wheel here I've got names of stains around the outside this one is too red these ones are too Brown so burnt Umber burnt sienna I think this one's probably the closest I've mixed the dye in some denatured alcohol so I think we're good to go here I'll just set that aside for a second and put a bevel on an edge here simulate what we're going to have and then I'll just roll up a piece of paper towel here and let's see what we've got that looks like a match a really good match okay we've got a plan okay I've got my stir stick out of the way here and we'll get the staining wow I can't believe I didn't have to mix the stain for that and that was pretty lucky it's looking good the stain has dried really fast and you can see it's lighter so I'm putting on a second coat here to give me that intensity I'm looking for well I'm happy with how that turned out so let that dry this needs to dry as well so move on to making a burnisher so the way I'm going to finish the edge there is to rub the surface down and burnishers can be sticks that you use to rub the edge but you can also use something on a spindle to turn it I've got a lathe so I'm going to make my own burnisher I'll show you how that's done okay turning this burnisher will also give me another opportunity to test out my invention I'm working on a dust collection system for a lathe because working on lathe is really dusty [Music] foreign [Music] collection invention is clean lathe I've got a patent pending on it and you can see here it's starting to pick up some of the Dust I still have some refinement to do I'm really hoping that this is a product that can be on the shelves that Woodworkers can use if you'd like to follow the Journey of how I go through from an idea to hopefully getting this product on a shelf go to the clean lathe YouTube channel subscribe and you get notified every time I publish a video foreign [Music] foreign ERS is all set to go here and I've got different widths I just need to figure out the right one for this so put the finished edge up here and I can see that this is going to work well so what I need to do is apply a little bit of wax and what this will do is melt as the burnisher rubs on the surface and heats it up so my lathe I'll just be putting on a low speed I just need to get enough of this on here and the wax will be sealing it up and protecting it so by the time I'm done here you should never know that I trim this original piece and it'll look as finished as the previous Edge did okay here we go foreign so there's the finished Edge you can see the difference without the burnishing and with the burnishing okay so the letters already get tacked on there but before I do that I need some time to work through fixing these tenons here these are the ones that are loose so what I need to do is make them wider and I'll show you the technique I use for that I'll put them in the Vise they'll just make things easier what I'm going to do is glue on some shavings on the outsides of these tenons so here the shavings that I use these are Poplar shavings and they're quite thick so I'm going to do is I'm using PVA glue here because I want a permanent Bond so I'll put this all around Tenon to start with and then I'll put them all the way around the Shaving and I use the elastics to hold everything together and that way I end up with a good solid Bond to get the Shaving connected to the Tenon so because the width of the shavings I use here we'll have to do a couple of them to measure it to length cut it off with my shop scissors and then hold it in place with an elastic so I'll do that with both these tenons and then we'll end up with tenons that are wider and fit much better because I can't close up that mortise any more than it is right now foreign the key I find is to load this up with elastics and that way I've got good clamping pressure to make sure I've got a good connection with the shaving and the Tenon so these glued up now I have one more Tenon here I need to work on this is where I had the finishing nail pulled out of the arm I think it's uh this one here so if I put this one in place it's just way too loose so what I'll do is go glue a shaving on that as well and let it dry I do have nail holes here I need to fill there's also some damage here I need to fill because of the process I'm going to use I'm not going to attach the leather yet I don't want to expose that to what I'm doing here so I'll get up some supplies and show you how I do that I'll use two different processes for this small void versus this big one the small void here I just use a wax stick and heat it up with a soldering iron so with a fill process like this it's just overfilling the hole and then come back and scrape off the excess so just let it dry for about a minute and then come back and rub it flat and nice thing about this black finish you don't really have to worry about wood grain and color it just all Blends in that little void there will just heat up a little bit of the wax make contact with existing wax so it Blends in and I'll just let it dry there you can see how quickly it loses its Sheen so I can level that out and there we go for this larger void here I'm going to be using some dye and some epoxy putty so you need to make sure you're wearing gloves when you're using epoxy putty and even dye the dye will stain your hands for a few days so the first thing I want to do is just prepare this opening there's a bunch of paint in here so I just want to clear that out okay now I'll take the epoxy putty out and what I'll do is cut a piece off the end a boat as much as what I need in there so it's just a a guessing game so you can see there's two colors of components those are the two parts of the epoxy and as I mash them together they start the chemical reaction so just take the wrapper off the back and then start pushing it all together so once I've got it mixed what I'm going to do is add a die to it change the color of it and I might not be able to get pure black I might have to touch this up with a bit of finish afterwards I want to squeeze it push it in that crevice and get it into all those little voids because that's what's going to help hold it in place once it hardens and when this hardens it's about the same density as wood so you can see how it's leveled out here I have a little bit here that I need to clear out but I'm going to let it firm up first I've got this piece on the side here that allow me to judge How firm it is I don't want to be mushing it around too much because I want to make sure that stays level at the end this will dry hard in 30 minutes and it comes to full strength at 60 minutes so I've got a few minutes here I'm just going to fill in some of these voids here with the wax and get them ready so I can assemble the chair so on this crack that was here earlier and around that area there's a few spots that just need a bit of stain we're good to go this piece is getting hard and if I squeeze it here I can feel resistance so it's firming up that's what I'm looking for so what I'm going to do now is just before it hardens fully carve out the mortise opening it's just going to save me work later the one that's hurting fully I'll let that harden up now and there are a couple Nails sticking out of the sides here and here so we'll just set those Nails fill them and then we'll get back to putting on the seat foreign thank you now that this is set up a little bit more you see there's a bit of a haze around here so I'm just going to take some vinegar and just wipe that off to clear off the residual epoxy putty so to bring the leather seat back and if you recall some of the tack heads broke off when I was pulling them out it was actually one that crumbled in my hand when I pulled it out so I'm concerned that because of the corrosion underneath here that if I try to put some of these back in that might break as they go in I can't reuse these I need to use new ones green corrosion tells you that it's copper and I've got some new copper tacks here problem is the color of the new ones looks so much newer than the old ones put them here you can see the difference an old restoration trick is to use heat to make new hardware look like old Hardware so you can see the finish the middle is now tarnished that'll blend in much better with the leather this process I've used to heat up these tacks you can also use on solid brass it's really good for antiquing things so I'll move this out of the way and what I need to do is evenly space the tacks all around the edge and I've already got a template here so what I'm going to do is just turn this over make sure those points aren't aligned because I don't want to be putting tax in the same old holes and what I'll do is Mark the position of each of the holes all the way around foreign foreign foreign I think this looks good I'm really happy with how this turned out now I do have a finish to touch up here where I did some Patchwork I've got those tenons to fit in here as well and then I can reassemble the rocking chair and we can take a look at the final project 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 let the glue on these tenons cure overnight and I took the opportunity to celebrate with a beer that I finished this leather seat it was making me kind of nervous that I might cut it mess it up and have to import another one so I'm going to take the elastics off these and we'll get them fit as I take these elastics off you can see there that's all one solid piece now so what I need to do is get this file down to fit in here the line I've got is here so because of this crack the mortise is wider this way and this way so what I need to do is file down this side and this side and that should get me close to starting to fit it I'll just draw my line here so this is where I don't want to take any off I'm going to start using a file to take it off here so what I do is run the file across this way and I use my finger to help guide it so I don't mess up the edge here so we'll test fit it now and see how we're doing and it's still a little tight side to side here so I've worn down the sides here you can see taking off all of that so I think I've got a good fit on the ends here I think where I'm getting the binding is on either side here so I'm going to line the inside of this with pencil and figure out where that friction point is and start working that down by rubbing a pencil on the inside what I'm doing is leaving lead there and that's going to allow me to see where I've got friction put this piece back in here so I'm going to put it here give it a bit of a rotate like this and I can see here where the pencil is rubbing and that's where I need to take it down it's a little further in now so I'll just rub it a bit more look for those pencil marks you can see one there there's some down here there's a little bit back here so that shows me where I need to do some work okay I'm getting closer here and I'll just pull this out and show you the marks that are on this you can see here this is from the lead now I've learned this technique from watching people work on gun stocks this is a process called inletting there is something you can put on the inside of this called inletting black but I find a pencil works just fine it's a great technique from another craft that helps out in this situation so I'll just give this a light rub here get off any of the lead so I've got bare wood again I don't want that to contaminate the glue surface and we'll try one final fit here there nice and solid it's not moving at all so I'll just take this back out and we'll get this little slot cut here for the wedge before I cut the slot I'll just show you here how little of that shaving is actually left on here it was just enough to take that wiggle out of it so I'll put this in the Vise and then cut that slot [Music] use my dovetail saw what I want to do is clear the old wedge that's still in here [Music] so there's a cleaned out slot ready for the wedge I've got two more tenons to fit here a couple slots on the tenons and then the chair back as well and then we'll talk about wedges an old tendons like this you need to make sure you clean off the glue so you can see here I'm just using a file to scrape that down to get back to bare wood and that way I'll make sure I've got a good surface for gluing there's also glue in some of the bottom of these mortises so I'm just clearing them out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so just take this forstner bit and run it in backwards and that way I'm not changing the direction of the hole and then forwards I can clear it out [Music] and there you can see that's all the old glue that's come out of the mortise we do the same thing in the bottom of the seat here where all the legs go in and we'll be good to go okay it's time to get out the wedges now the wedge that goes into the split Tenon here has to go in far enough that it's going to expand the outside here but it needs to be short enough that it's not going to get bound up here that'll prevent it from moving in so what I need to do is just fit it cut it to length and we'll be ready for the glue up if you'd like to learn how to make wedges like this I've got a video on five different ways you can safely make wedges if you're thinking about using a table saw please don't I explained why in the video I'll leave a link up here and in the video description so you can get to that video [Music] I use an artist brush when I put on glue that way I can quickly spread it on the surfaces I need with the brush end and I can also get inside the crevices with the back of the brush so it's good for getting in the mortises for example in here [Music] [Music] so what I'll do is put a clamp on here and get the back as tight as I can and then I'll drive the wedges in now I glue the wedge on one side this is a technique that Curtis Buchanan uses he's a chair maker and that way it allows for wood expansion and slight movement this is theory foreign [Music] so just water on a paper towel that'll clean up this mess it's easier to clean up when it's wet then waiting till it dries the last step is to touch up this with some black and you can see the joints here have a little bit of markings in them so I'm going to mix up some shellac with some dye to deal with that now I'm not sure what type of finish this is but the nice thing about shellac is it sticks to practically everything and shellac allows me to add some dye to it because it's got alcohol in it and that will dissolve I use these handy little silicone cups because when the Finish is dried it just pops right out nothing can stick to silicone so I'm just using some garnish lock I have from previous projects put it in there open up the die just get some on here bring the die in you can see how quickly that turns into a black color I'm just going to get a little bit more color there get the intensity a little higher okay and we're ready to go so just feeling around here I've got a raised bump right here I'm just going to start sanding a little bit I think it's actually some of the previous finish there's a lump there from one someone painted around this piece so this is a very thin mixture of shellac take a few coats here to get that covering the gray epoxy putty see how that's helping it all blend in so you can see here I can use this to disguise this as well you can use a black touch-up marker if you've got one but you can see how well that just hides the imperfections in the black finish she'll act rise really fast so in about 10 minutes I can put a second coat on I'll finish doing the touch-ups here I'll wait for the glue to dry and I'll show you the before and after photos [Music] foreign [Music] growing my skills and as you've seen here I've now got some leather working under my belt there are some YouTube channels I've learned a lot from Curtis Buchanan makes wonderful chairs I've learned a lot about chair making from him Kim's upholstery teaches obviously about upholstery she's a great resource that's also been on our Channel and have also done some work with Mike Walt in the UK for woodturning a great channel for learning how to do wood turning I don't yet have a favorite channel for leather working so if you're familiar with leather working and there's a couple channels you enjoy watching please add them to the comments because I'd like to watch a few more and learn more about this skill we've got some merch that's made up so you can purchase these on our website if you're interested sweatshirts t-shirts and hoodies and this is the next project I'm working on there are a number of pieces of wood that have fallen off here because we've got some wood rot back here where the hinges hold the lid on you can also see there's Separation on the lid so I'll need to fix that this is being used as a coffee table if you haven't subscribed to our Channel yet click over here and click on that Bell icon and you'll get notified every time we publish a video I'm going to leave another video right here that I know you'll enjoy thanks for watching fixing furniture foreign [Music]

Channel: Fixing Furniture

Views: 269,365

Keywords: furniture repair, woodworking, furniture restoration, restoration, how to, wood glue, leather seat, leather, leather seat repair, leather seat restoration, chair, rocking chair, hide glue, glue, adhesive, wood filler, epoxy filler, epoxy putty, shellac, dye, stain, burnishing, tacks

Id: 5Tuv9mRf5fg

Length: 83min 24sec (5004 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023