Kitchen chair repair

message.

A message came via the website, just before Christmas asking if I could repair 4 kitchen chairs.

My first contact with the customer was to confirm that these were not required for the Christmas holidays!! fortunately there was no urgency, but the customer explained that he thought they were solid beech but were in need of some love and attention and certainly too good to throw away.

On examination all the joints had come loose over time and some of the dowels in the joints were broken and would need replacement.

I stripped each chair in to its individual components, removed the old glue and sanded them all round to get rid of the old worn finish.

Assembly.

As I have said I needed to replace some of the dowels in the joints. The most difficult were the stiles at the outer edge of the chair backs. The dowels at the top of these had been formed during the turning of the piece and were the full diameter. Obviously I could not make them this size. I had to make a socket in the top of the stile making sure to leave enough timber around the new peg to give it sufficient strength. The socket in the top rail cleaned out to the original size so the dowel had to be stepped 8mm diameter in to the stile and 12mm in to the top rail.

Fortunately I had some beech in stock and managed to turn the new dowels on the lathe, to the correct dimensions.

The chairs were then put together, new maple wedges were added to the bottom of the stiles to anchor them in place, then once the glue had dried I applied 2 coats of Colron finishing wax.