Bruce Darrow
07-19-2015, 5:40 PM
Greetings all,
I have an old "Jenny Lind" spindle bed that racks from side to side. Cleaning up and regluing the bottom rail and upper tenons will be fairly straightforward, but I notice that all the vertical spindles are also loose and thus will spin. There is a slight bowing of the two turned rails that capture these spindles.
My question is: did original construction generally use glue on the vertical spindle tenons, or were they typically just captured? I could straighten out the bow in the turned rails by gluing a couple or all of the vertical spindles and clamping - it's not that severe. But is this sacrilegious? It is old - not a reproduction. Don't want to be accused of "laying violent hands on" an antique, valuable today or not.
What say ye?
Thanks,
Bruce
I have an old "Jenny Lind" spindle bed that racks from side to side. Cleaning up and regluing the bottom rail and upper tenons will be fairly straightforward, but I notice that all the vertical spindles are also loose and thus will spin. There is a slight bowing of the two turned rails that capture these spindles.
My question is: did original construction generally use glue on the vertical spindle tenons, or were they typically just captured? I could straighten out the bow in the turned rails by gluing a couple or all of the vertical spindles and clamping - it's not that severe. But is this sacrilegious? It is old - not a reproduction. Don't want to be accused of "laying violent hands on" an antique, valuable today or not.
What say ye?
Thanks,
Bruce