Furniture Repairs
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' Have you ever had some nice furniture you really liked and it finally wore out or broke from misuse and wished you could get it fixed.
Maybe you put it aside and always thought you'd "Get to it someday" but you know you might never and it's a bit more work than you know how to do or have time for or you don't have the tools and don't want to buy them for just the one job you have to do. There was a time when there were "Fixit" shops on every corner but today they're few and far between so unfortunately there's a lot of good old furniture gathering dust in attics garages and barns that could be given new life. Maybe you picked up some good used furniture at a yard sale or flea market and want to get it fixed. Well, if the stuff you have is solid hardwood, rare and/or expensive to replace it may be worth letting me take a look at it for you and getting it fixed up. I find that sometimes you can even make things better than when they were first built like this set of chairs for instance. These chairs are solid oak but the original workmanship wasn't too accurate so they came apart. The mortises were much larger than the tenons and had to be cleaned and filled and wooden pegs installed after the glue up to keep them from pulling apart again. The original glue join was haphazard and sparse as well. |
Clean and test all joints for fit. This mortise and the matching one on the other side was too large so it had to be internally shimmed with mahogany to fill in the excess space.
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Glue and clamp. Band clamps to provide uniform pressure all around. Pipe clamps to apply specific pressure to problem areas.
The box is full of weight to make sure the four legs stay on the floor during the glue up and cure time. Sometimes the furniture starts an argument with you and you have to win whether it likes it or not! |
All done, and ready for another 50 years of use. The kids still shouldn't be allowed to rock back on them though!
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A book shelf that was headed to the dumpster
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This used to be a sorting shelf from a Post Office or mail handling system in a hotel. It was supposed to hit the dumpster on the job site but I took it home knowing it deserved a better fate than that. I took out all the dividers and had to remove the smashed up backer board and replaced that with Aromatic Cedar and painted it white. I heat stripped and sanded off the old layers of finish. It's made from mixed hardwoods so well worth saving. The white against the bright cedar backing makes it really stand out, so much so we kept it for ourselves!
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