Chair repair

[Richard Hutchings]

I have 4 of these chairs to repair. My daughter bought them at an antique shop and asked if I could fix them. Being the good dad I am, I said sure.:mad: These have been repaired with nails, making it very difficult to get apart to repair. Chair #1 is apart and I have a lot of work to do to get it back together. I'm thinking I should find a way to get the nails out before disassembling the next three. I could use some ideas from someone more experienced.:o

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[Jim Andrew]

Too bad they didn't use screws.

[Mike Henderson]

To do a proper repair on a chair, you generally need to take it apart. If you can get the nails out before disassembling the joint, that's good. If not, take the joints apart as carefully as possible.

If you take the nails out first and then still can't get the joint apart, take a thin saw, such as a Japanese saw, and cut at the joint. You'll cut through the dowels (all these kind of chairs have dowels - almost never tenons). After you get the joint apart, use a loose tenon to do the repair and good glue. I use epoxy because it has a bit of gap filling capability.

Glue the back as an assembly. Glue the front as an assembly if you had the take the front two legs apart. Then glue the front to the back, and put in corner blocks.

A really messed up chair can take a lot of time to repair.

Mike

[Oh, and sand everything while you have it apart. It's much easier than waiting until you put it together.]

[lowell holmes]

I have repaired several chairs for a daughter. The chairs are teak and the joints were failing due to age and glue failure. Re-gluing worked for a while, but the teak does not respond well to glue. The joints were dowels and in some cases half laps.
I ended up using loose tenons and putting dowels through the joint. That with the glue appears to be working. I had to make a dowel plate and make 3/16" dowels.
Some were 1/8" dowels.

[Richard Hutchings]

These chairs have tenons.

You'll cut through the dowels (all these kind of chairs have dowels - almost never tenons).
Mike

[Oh, and sand everything while you have it apart. It's much easier than waiting until you put it together.]
I hadn't planned on refinishing them. I'm hoping to get by with a little touch-up here and there. A lot of the paint is worn off and this something my daughter finds attractive so I don't think I have to worry too much. I need to find a good way to get these nails out, I can't cut them without cutting the tenons.

[Richard Hutchings]

Corner blocks sounds like a great idea for a little added assurance. Thanks

[roger wiegand]

I think if I were doing it I would take the approach of sawing the joints apart and replacing the joinery with loose tenons. You can use a hollow screw extractor if you'd like to get the nails out. Usually if you make a big enough divot to get purchase on the nail heads to pull them you have a more difficult repair issue. I have seen a tool (which I can't find now) that made a uniform hollow around the head of a nail to allow you to pull it and then replace the divot. Never tried it. One hint, if you can catch the top of the nail somehow is that if you heat the nail with a soldering iron it will become much easier to pull. Likewise with recalcitrant screws.

[Brian Henderson]

Unfortunately, as others have said, your best bet is to cut it all apart and then replace the original joinery with loose tenons. Especially with older furniture, you find all kinds of haphazard repairs that have probably harmed the integrity of the original joinery. When you have people driving nails through the tenons, you've compromised them and they are more likely to come apart down the road. Better to simply cut out the old tenons and replace them with something stronger.

[Richard Hutchings]

Makes sense. I just wish I had waited to get your input before starting the first one. That ones going to take a little extra work to clean up. I thank you all very much.