Loosening Furniture Joints with a Heat Gun - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Sometimes in the course of repairing a chair, it's necessary to disassemble part of the chair that's not even loose. I'm making a new backsplat for this dining chair, but in order to get my new backsplat in here, I've got to remove this crest rail. Well, I'm going to use some heat and see if I can get these joints to loosen up enough so that I can take this off without damaging it. In every crest rail like this, there's short grain right here and it's not very strong and could easily break. I'm going to have to be careful. It's getting warm. I'm trying to, I'm hoping that it won't get so warm as to damage the finish. That's my goal. Okay, so now I've got these joints opened up all the way around the dowel. I'm going to use some thick putty knives. See if I can wedge this up a little bit. So I've got it off minimal, absolutely minimal damage. After I glue it up, it'll need a little bit of touch up work, but not bad at all. And now I can proceed with my repair. So I've done, I've completed the repairs to this chair and glued the crest rail back on and you can see it came out really well. There was a little bit of damage to these joints. I was able to fill them in lightly sanded and do a little aerosol and they look great.