Chair Lock....

[Matthew Poeller]

My parents have an old dining room set made from mahagony. About every five years the chairs, where the seat meets the back, have to be re-glued. It looks to be just a doweled joint. They asked me to re-glue them this time and I am wondering if I should use chair lock or titebond 2. I believe that whoever glued them previously used chair lock or something similar but they were never really, really sturdy.

I woudl prefer not to pull the joint completely apart.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Matt Poeller

[Lee Schierer]

When I repair chairs with tenons, I drill out all the old glue and trim off the old glue on the tenon. Typically this results in a very poor fit. I take some straight grain maple and plane off some shavings. I wrap the shaving around the dowel until I get a good snug fit with the hole. I coat the tenon and one side of the shaving with glue, the wrap the shaving around the tenon, apply more glue to the outside of the shaving and assemble the joint. The result is a much stronger joint than just filling the gap with glue or applying new glue over old glue. This process should also work well with dowels.

Lee

[Maurice Ungaro]

How about Chair Doctor from Lee Valley (Veritas)? Seems to be pretty straight forward and simple, without disassembling the chairs.

[Andrew Ault]

If you do not want to disassemble them, then the chair lock type product is the best choice. I don't know that Titebond will adhere to it (if it was used previously). Bob Smalser did a posting on glues adhering to old work and he noted that PVA glues did not bond well with dried PVA.

I reglued our dining room chairs. I found it easy to just knock them apart with an old autobody mallet (soft-faced), clean off old glue with a Dremel and replace a few dowels as needed. I used the Veritas chair glue and it worked well. I did one chair a day, after work and left each chair clamped until the next day.

[Matthew Poeller]

Well here is the thing. I did not want to have to take them apart but it looks like that is going to be the only way to do it right.

The chair doctor stuff that I was reading on Lee Valley looked like it swelled the wood when it seeped into the end grain and I did not think that would work well with the dowels.

Maybe I will give the chair doctor a try and if that does not work I will got the take the things apart method. I was going to try to get away from that since my parents live 1.5 hours away and I do not want to transport the chairs.