The chair I fixed four times
Three of those fixes were wrong and one of them was wrong in a way that took a year to show up. What I should have done on the first evening, written down so I stop doing it.
Anna asked me to write this one because I keep telling people about it in the pub, and she says if I’m going to bore people I may as well do it in writing where they can leave.
The chair is one of four. Mid-century, nothing special, bought secondhand before Nell was born. The back left joint where the rung goes into the leg started to move about five years ago. It has been fixed four times. Three of them were me doing the fast thing.
| Attempt | What I did | How long it held |
|---|---|---|
| One | Squirted PVA in the gap | Six weeks |
| Two | Glue and sawdust, packed in | About a year |
| Three | Screw through the leg | Until Christmas, then it split |
| Four | Took it apart properly | Four years, still fine |
Why the first three failed
Same reason all three times. There was old glue in there.
New glue does not stick to old glue. It sticks to wood. When you squirt fresh glue into a joint that already has fifty years of dried adhesive in it, you are gluing glue to glue, and it will feel solid for a while because glue is quite good at feeling solid. Then it lets go, usually when somebody leans back.
The sawdust one is the one I’d warn about. It worked better, and working better is what made it bad. It held for a year, so I stopped thinking about it, and in that year the loose rung was working away at the inside of the hole every time someone sat down. By the time it came apart, the hole was oval. A joint that fails fast is doing you a favour.
The screw was just impatience. A screw through a leg puts all the load in one small place across the grain, and the grain is what splits. It split.
What actually worked
Fourth time I took the whole chair apart. Not just the bad joint — all of them, because if one has gone the others are usually on their way and you will not want to do this again.
You need almost nothing for this. Old glue comes off with hot water and a bit of time. Wrap a damp cloth round the tenon, leave it while you make a cup of tea, then scrape it back with a chisel used flat, no cutting. Inside the hole, a dowel wrapped in sandpaper. You want bare wood, and you want it to look bare, not nearly bare.
The hole on that one leg had gone oval, so it needed building back rather than filling. I glued a thin strip of the same wood in and trimmed it to round again. Ten minutes. The version of me who used sawdust would have said that was overkill.
Then aliphatic resin — Titebond, the yellow one, nothing exotic, and I have no arrangement with anybody, I just have a bottle of it. Clamp, wipe the squeeze-out with a damp rag before it goes off, leave it overnight. It will feel done after an hour. It is not done after an hour.
If it’s a piece you actually care about, hide glue is the better answer, because hide glue can be undone with heat and water and the next person to fix it will thank you. It’s more faff. On a kitchen chair I used the yellow bottle and I’d do the same again.
The pencil mark
Underside of the seat, in pencil: the date and one word for what I did. Four dates on that chair now.
That’s the only reason I know the sawdust one lasted a year and the PVA lasted six weeks. Without the pencil I’d have a strong feeling and no idea. Anna points out this is just note-taking, which is the entire premise of her website, and that I have therefore been doing this for years while claiming not to be interested in it.
Things people email to ask
- How do you fix a wobbly chair joint properly?
- Take it apart, get every trace of old glue off both the tenon and the inside of the hole, glue it, clamp it and leave it overnight. The taking-apart is the part people skip and it is the part that matters — a wobble is never only in the joint you can see, so if one has gone the others are usually on their way.
- Can you put new glue on top of old glue?
- No, and this is why my first three repairs failed. Glue sticks to wood, not to fifty-year-old dried adhesive, so a joint you have simply squirted PVA into will feel solid for a few weeks and then let go when somebody leans back. Hot water, a damp cloth and a chisel used flat will take the old stuff off in about ten minutes.
- PVA, aliphatic resin or hide glue for a chair?
- For a kitchen chair, aliphatic resin — the yellow bottle. It grabs faster than PVA and is stronger in a joint that moves. For anything you actually care about, hide glue is the better answer, because heat and water will undo it and whoever fixes it next will thank you. It is more faff, and on our chair I used the yellow bottle.
- How long should you clamp a repaired joint?
- Overnight, whatever the bottle says. It will feel done after an hour, which is the trap — the glue has grabbed but has not cured, and a chair put back into service that evening is a chair you will be fixing again. Wipe the squeeze-out with a damp rag before it goes off, then walk away until the morning.
Tom
Carpenter. Writes when something in the house breaks and he has an opinion about why. Types with two fingers, which is why there are fewer of his.
If this was any use
Three tools fix nine things out of ten
People ask me what to buy and expect a list of twenty. It’s three, plus a torch, and the money is better spent on one decent version of each than on a set of forty in a plastic case.
The washing machine wasn’t broken
It wouldn’t drain, it was eleven years old, and we’d already looked at new ones. Then I took the filter out. There was a 2p, a hair clip and something I have chosen not to identify.
The radiator that was cold at the top
Cold at the top, hot at the bottom. Anna had put a jumper on and mentioned it twice and I had said I’d look at it, twice, over about five weeks. It took four minutes and a fifty-pence key.
Comments
They’re open, but they go through me first — every one is read and approved by hand, which is slow and occasionally very slow. Email is the fastest route, and I answer most of them.
Write to us