How to Repair Broken and Cracked Wood | Woodworking Tips

welcome to our workshop have you ever encountered split or broken wood that you try to repair and weren't sure how to fix I'm going to show you how 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 let's get into the workshop and start fixing furniture before you repair wood only understand the grain pattern wood because it's really important grain typically runs the length of boards and at the end you've got something called end grain if you were to look at this under a microscope it would be like looking at the ends of straws there is very little structure on that end and if I were to try to take two pieces of wood and connect them this way there would be very little strength because it would be like trying to glue a bunch of straws to the end of a bunch of straws now if I connect the green like this I would have a very strong bond so if you've got a break this way the only way that you can fix it is reinforce in that joint typically this is very difficult to repair if you've got a break this way on the grain you can fix that this is a chair leg and here there's a split that runs all the way down this piece here now it's still intact but if I pull it apart here you can see I can open it a fair bit this piece has never been fixed before so this is great there's no glue I have to clean out I can open it enough here that I can get some glue in there but if you look down at the bottom here it's still intact and it's quite strong so I'm going to keep that the way it is prop it open and glue it up so the first thing I'm going to do is use a wedge to hold this open that way I can get the glue in and work it around I'm gonna start by putting it at the top of this part here and just letting gravity take it down I'll do the same from this hop now to get that glue spread around properly they entered a string this is just cotton string but because this is so long what I normally do is use a brush to move the glue around and I will do that at the front but I wanted to make sure I can get it right into the middle of this leg so by moving the string back and forth it allows me to get down as far as possible and get that glue spread on all parts of the Brooklyn joint now I'll go in with my hardest brush and augment that glue where needed in the bigger gap areas and there's a small split right here I'm also going to get glue in now I'm making a mess of the front of this but that's okay because this wood is finished and what's going to happen is once I clamp it the glue will squeeze it like it normally would and because it's finished and she's gonna wipe right off it's not stained at all because it's not bare wood so I've got all the glue where I need it except for one spot and that's where this wedge is so just take that out the blue in there and then I call it so now it's just a matter of clamping up but there is a small sliver in front but as I close this it seems to pop forward so I just need to tuck it in and then clamp it and you can see how that glue squeeze-out is coming that's exactly what I'm looking for next I'm gonna show you how to fix a broken door I'm going to use one of my favorite tools in furniture repair and that's a spreader clamp I'll leave you a link in the video description this is a door that's been brought to me by customer with a severe break in it someone had tried to repair it before but weren't successful at it this is the bottom of the door and you can see at the bottom of the style here where it meets the rail this is the profile where the wood should be and this is the break so this split is severe all the way through and you can see here there's some glue residue someone has tried to previously fix this and the common mistake is trying to squeeze a little bit of glue on the surface and try to get it in that joint and clamp everything but unfortunately that doesn't give the structure as needed and that's why this broke apart again so I'm going to take this all the way apart and show you how to fix it so in order for me to pull this apart what I do is I put clamps on this this is the rail this is the style I put clamps on the styles so I've got some grip [Music] let's see here it's opening up here it's opening up opening up again and it's breaking and that just need a bit more here more part so now here we've got the two separated pieces what I need to do is glue it back together on this previous your prayer you can see right here this piece is glued and it actually belongs back in here so this piece has to come out in order for me to clamp all this back into the right spot and get good closure on the grain so that we've got a seamless repair as well as making sure that a stronger pair here when I try to put this piece back together you can see yet again here's some glue that someone inserted and they never got a clamp shut so there was no way that this door would have had full strength just by having that little bit of glue on there what I'm doing now is inspecting this broken point here and any little pieces of wood that are sticking up and out of the way that might prevent this joint from going together seamlessly is what I'm looking for so I'll clean those up as well as any glue like this needs to come out to make sure I've got enough surface there but I can get glue in and it's going to stick to the wood on this joint here in the door you can see how this wood has opened up and there's a big glob of something yellow here this is the previous repair where someone to put some glue in there and tried to clamp it together but they didn't get it together properly so for me to do a proper job on this and I have to take this apart clean that out so we can get a nice tight joint in this part here [Music] now that I've cleaned it all up you can see how this comes back together again and with some glue and clamping pressure that split will virtually disappear and see how that jar looks pretty seamless now I'm trying to glue on the style and my test fits showing me here that this piece won't even go together what's happened is there's a tiny bit of glue right there in the edge so I can't get this put in so I've got some glue to clean up here and I'll see if I can get it to fit here's what the joint looks like now cleaned it up that's gonna come together well once I've got clamps on there there was a bit of a gap here but that was part of how it was manufactured so I can't fix that this is how the piece goes together first of all have to start with this end here there's a piece of wood sticking out it has to be bent over so the wood grain actually blends get that at the right height so with some clamping here on these smaller pieces some clamping on the overall piece it should come together well the last example I have for you is a chair seat I'm going to show you what happens when you don't lose something properly this is a split in a seat that I'm repairing has they taken it apart the split has revealed itself because there's no structure holding it together and you can see here how it was previously repaired someone had glued it and then they put these braces across so for me to fix this properly I've got to take these braces off open that piece up clean out the glue dry and then put it back together now they've opened up this glue joint I can see what happened between these two pieces here the glue joint failed where this newer looking wood is the glue held up and the wood fibers split instead if we look at the other side you see the same pattern this is where the old glue failed right here is the only spot where the glue held together and the wood split off I'm going to scrape the joint clean to remove all the old wood glue then I will coat both sides with glue and put it back together with a clean joint a tight seen the proper amount of glue and some clamping pressure this joint will be stronger than the wood fibres on the seat [Music] hopefully this rings animals have given you a good idea of how you can repair broken wood we want our YouTube channel to be a supportive environment for furniture repairs so if you've got tips or suggestions please leave them in the comments if you click on the link over here and click on the bell icon you'll get notified every time we publish a video thanks for watching fixing furniture [Music]

Channel: Fixing Furniture

Views: 101,926

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: furniture repair, woodworking, broken wood, repair wood, repair broken wood, split wood, chair leg, cabinet door, chair seat, wood glue, how to, learn woodworking, workshop, split, fix wood, glue wood, spreader clamp, furniture restoration, cracked wood, crack in wood, repair wood crack

Id: AdfhyZvVkio

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019