Katie and shopping
Our daughter Katie is very good at finding bargains on facebook and similar websites. This has saved her a fortune whilst restoring her house, managing to secure some fantastic fireplaces, among many other finds.
One of her purchases was a set of four lovely Ercol dining chairs. I picked these up from close to home and we have been storing them for some time. On close inspection I saw that they required some remedial work.
Some of the chairs had legs which had worked loose in the sockets, some attempt had been made to remedy the problem by driving the legs further in to the base of the seat, leaving 4 raised buttons where the legs projected through. On other chairs the back had become loose and creaky.
Looking on line a restored chair of this sort would retail for £250.00 so I was a bit nervous to start. The first stage was to pull the chairs apart and clean off the old glue.
Remake
The chair with the creaky back came apart fairly easily. I could find no sign of any previous repair. The chair with the faulty legs was a different story. A previous repairer had tried to remove the wedges from the top of the legs and had made an awful mess. When I got the legs out from the seat, the top of one leg fell away and had to be replaced, then turned on the lathe to match the profile of the original leg.
With both the legs and the back assemblies, new wedges had to be cut, once the spindles and frame for the back, or the legs had been inserted in to the seat base, the new wedges were hammered home, any excess being trimmed with a chisel and the completed chair sanded and oiled then waxed to finish.
Not the easiest job but very rewarding to return iconic pieces to a useable condition.
Get in Touch
Call 07710 888611, or email mrhwoodwork@outlook.com.