Repairing a crack in a raised panel

[Alex Silva]

Hi All,

I've just bought this gorgeous french one door provincial armoire. As you can see there's a full thickness crack (split) right in the middle of the lower panel of the door. I got the armoire for 70% off original price (less than 500$). Besides dismantling the frame which I would like to avoid, what would you suggest in order to repair this crack ? It is caused by the panel that was not being able to move with seasonal changes. Maybe because it was glued by accident at one place, who knows. The other option I was thinking is to fll the crack with wood putty but that will show a lot that's for sure.. I tried to moves the two halves in order to join them together but I was unable to do it. Do you have any other suggestions ?

Thank you !

Alex

[Joe Chritz]

Is there room to attack the crack from the backside? Maybe take out part of the rails and router a smooth slot that you can then fill with some complimentary wood. To make a real repair you are likely going to have to disassemble. If the panel would move in the slots you could attach some cleats on the back and pull it together but if it moved in the slot it wouldn't be 70% off.

Joe

[Alex Silva]

Maybe if I rout out the lower part of the inferior rail, i will be able to move the two halves of the panel in order to join them together.. or maybe there's another way ?

Alex

[Neal Clayton]

problem is you need clamp pressure to glue it up. off the top of my head...

if you could match the profile you could get boards down around the edges of the panel, and possibly pull them enough for glue pressure that way. you could nail boards on either side of the crack, front and back, and use those to pull them together til glue sets, then patch the nail holes after.

short of disassembly that's about the only way. don't bother with the putty, as soon as the weather changes it'll crack and fall out. gluing the panel up is the only thing that will work, just have to decide how to get pressure on the joint while the glue sets.

[Joe Jensen]

Solid surface installers have a clamp setup that uses vacuum pucks to hold to each side of a gap, and then they either use external clamps or a built in clamp to pull a joint tight. Here is a pic

Keep in mind that something caused the crack. I suspect that glue seeped from the corner joints an glued the panel to the corners keeping it from sliding. If you don't disassemble and correct this problem, it will either not pull together, or crack.

I'd probably route the back lip off the rails and styles, unstick the panel, glue the crack, and then put a new lip back on..joe

[Lee Schierer]

Even if you repair it it likely to fail again unless you create more room for the panel to move along the top edge. The double curve contour on the top is probably why it cracked in the first place. The panel can't move the two humps closer together. If you carefully remove the panel by routing out the back edges of the frame and glue it back together using some clamps and create more room for the panel to move between the two peaks on the top then the panel might stay in one piece.

[Jim Heffner]

I think you should be able to use a strong shop vacuum and use it draw the glue into the crack. When enough glue has penetrated the crack from one side to the other...clamp it up with a couple of bar clamps, scrape off the excess glue and let it dry overnight. Then it should hold and not separate again unless the raised panel has been mistakenly glued into the frame,
then it will probably crack again at some future time.