Bad Furniture Repair - I'm Stuck! A Fixing Furniture Restoration

Welcome back to Fixing Furniture. Today I'm working on the stool that was previously repaired and it's broken again. Unfortunately there's no quick fix for this. So I'm going to show you how I repair this. I've also got an almost identical stool here that's broken and this one's going to be much faster to repair than this one. This is going to be about 10 times longer. So I'm going to show you how I repair this and why there's such a difference between these stools in repairing furniture. Stick with me I'll show you how it's done. As a furniture repair business we're opening the doors to our workshop to show you the tools and techniques to repair furniture. The front rail here you can see this has been broken off. We give you tips to make your repair projects easier. Let's get into the workshop and start fixing furniture. Let's start by comparing the two stools so we can see how this one was broken and repaired and how this one's broken as well. On this previously repaired stool you can see there was a split here and someone glued it up and they decided it was a good idea to put dowels through it to help hold it together. That's not actually how you repair furniture. Here you can see there's also a screw and that screw went into the leg. So the leg here looks like it's well worn and that's not the way you repair furniture So because this didn't hold then this connection here has snapped off and likely caused this connection on this other leg to snap off as well. So this is loose. I'll have to pull that apart. But this is an example of how not to repair this. Now this likely started off just like this one. So we'll take a close look at it. Here you can see there's a split in the wood. Now this is something that can be repaired. If we look at the tenon that goes in there that's in good shape. If we look at the stretcher that tenon's in good shape. Here we've got a mortise that's in good shape. So this is a relatively simple repair but if this was broken all the way off it wouldn't be that much that different than if it's split. So this is how not to repair furniture because this is now very expensive to repair because what I have to do is turn on the lathe a new leg, a new stretcher here, and a new stretcher here. There are two things I want you to avoid when repairing something like this. The first one is putting a piece of wood on the end of this and thinking that's strong enough it won't hold. The second is putting a dowel in here to try to connect the parts. It might cosmetically look right but it doesn't offer the structural integrity you need on a piece of furniture like this. The skills needed for this are woodworking skills to be and the other part is taking a brand new piece of wood and getting that stain and finish to match the existing piece. We offer courses on FixingFurniture.com to be able to repair furniture. So if you're interested in learning those skills go to FixingFurniture.com to learn more. I'm going to start by working on this stool here. To repair this split I need to make sure I've got a nice tight joint here and if I open this up you can see there's a bunch of debris in here. So I'm just going to prop it open get out the vacuum to clean it up. So let's see how well this closes up. So I'm squeezing it you can see there's still a slight gap there so I think it's been contaminated in there. I don't know exactly why it's not closing all the way but because there's a slight gap there the only adhesive that will hold is epoxy. PVA glue won't hold here, high glue won't hold here. So I'm going to get out the epoxy mix it up and then I can clamp this as tight as I can get it. I've loaded up the joint here with epoxy and if I squeeze here you can see that the epoxy is coming out. So it's had time to settle down and now it's ready to be clamped up. I've added one more clamp here just to level it out. So I'll let this dry for 24 hours and then we'll come back to it and finish the repair. On the second stool I'll take it apart and then I'll have a template to reproduce each of the parts. So there are screws holding this column in. I'll take the screws off the legs will come off and I can take the stretchers apart. Looks like this has been repaired as well. This is the female threaded seat post. Here's a piece that was in the wooden column. Here's another piece. Looks like it went there somehow and then someone patched it with this I guess. So as far as I understand cast iron can't be repaired. If you do know let me know in the comments. But it looks like I have to search for a replacement part here. I can now label these parts and then I'll finish disassembling it and these pieces here that are whole will give me the templates as to what I need to create on the lathe. Now this is interesting. There's something shiny right here. You see that? I'm wondering if this was another attempt at repairing something. Perhaps the tenon was too loose. Oh wow. Look at that. Let's see if I can pull that out. Well that's a first. I've never seen that before. That's not the way that you make a loose tenon tighter. I'll keep pulling this apart. Everything seems pretty loose. Wow that's loose but doesn't want to come apart. Now when you're dealing with an issue like this I highly suggest not using a mallet because you could end up breaking parts if you do that. There's something holding this together but I don't know what it is. Oh there's some epoxy putty here. Oh there's a nail right there. Maybe this one's easier to take out. Wow it's not fun to take things apart when people repair things improperly. If I really forced that I could end up breaking another joint and having to remake another piece. Wow the struggle is real. Okay I'm going to try some vinegar here to see if this will loosen up a little bit of what we've got here. Vinegar will break down any hide glue that might be in here that might be holding on to it but I don't know what's in these joints. Someone's done some pretty funky stuff to this chair. Perhaps someone that knew more about metal working than woodworking. I can feel that's loose. So let that see if it will do any magic. Let that sit for about five minutes. The vinegar is soaked in and I'm seeing a layer of something right here. So that looks like some wood filler but this piece is pivoting around this nail so I think I've got to get that nail out. It looks pretty substantial so I'm gonna have to create some damage to get this out. Nails like this are always difficult to remove because you've got to get underneath the head to pry it out. I'm starting to see this wood split rather than it coming out. That's not a good sign. There's another piece of oak. I'll hang on to that. I'm starting to doubt whether this is going to come out. Okay I think we're in the worst case scenario. See that wood starting to split? I'm gonna have to break this out because what I want to do is preserve that tenon. So carefully I'm gonna go here and break that and that. Okay so hang on to that piece as well. Let's see what happens here. I'm contemplating leaving this in here but I really would like to get it apart so I can put it together properly. That just doesn't want to come apart but you see how loose it is? That's not a joint. That's going to help stabilize the chair, the stool. I wonder if it's also driven into that joint back there at that angle. Okay I think I'm gonna have to get the mallet out. I'll try to take this apart and see what breaks. Okay here was nothing. Well that came off with another piece of metal on the tenon. I can't pull that out. I'm gonna punch it out. I'll start with a larger punch just to get it started. So here goes nothing. Okay so now I need to do is switch to a smaller diameter on the punch. It looks a little bit large but I'll start it. So I'll just give you a close-up here so you can see what this looks like now. So the nail is recessed. It's not poking out anywhere. So we'll keep going. So a smaller punch now that's just slightly smaller than the nail. We'll keep going. I felt a bit of a release there so I think that might be it. Oh maybe I slipped off the nail. Oh the struggle is real. Okay well it's out. The tenon is in one piece which is good news. Let's see what happens with that nail. I'm not seeing any trace of the nail. It's not coming through the back here but what I do see is a crack here. So I think that nail is driven in there and that joint it's not moving. So we're going to leave that one be. We'll have to fix the tenon in this joint when we put this back together. Wow that was quite a battle. A little bit of blood. A little bit of sweat. No tears though. And I've got a piece here I can use as my template for the stretcher and a piece I can use for a template for the leg. So I can now turn these on the lathe but this just goes to show you if someone's repairing something improperly you can do so much more damage to it than if you did it right the first time. And that's why we're passionate about teaching these skills about furniture repair so more furniture can be preserved. I'll get this hardware taken off here and then get set up with the lathe. Become a member of our Fixing Furniture community for resources to help you learn. We offer reference sheets, live meetings, community forum and more. Go to FixingFurniture.com for details. Here in my wood supply this is called a breaker. These are old furniture parts. I don't think I see any oak there but down here I like to label the length and the species. So here I've got oak 13 inches. Two of those will work. So to prepare my stock for woodturning I use a center finder because my stock isn't always square. So just go around all four sides here to tell me where the center is and then I can put it all in the middle. So that's one end prepped. The other end will do the exact same thing but I want to put a drive spur in. So I'll draw my lines and then use a handsaw to put grooves in. Because this wasn't square I've got two lines so I'm just splitting the difference and then my awl goes in the center because the drive spur has a spike in the center. Making sure the end grain doesn't shift that hole. Then I can take my drive spur and drive it in. This will give me really good traction when I turn on the lathe. So this is my lathe and when I learned woodturning years ago I was really surprised at how dirty this made my workshop. So as a result I've been working for a number of years and have a patent pending on a dust collection system that doesn't exist in the market. This essentially captures the fine dust and a lot of the large debris into the dust collection system so this doesn't end up making a mess around my shop. If I'm doing a turning that's eight or nine inches I can have chips that are 10 feet behind me in the shop. It just makes a total mess but with this I contain probably 95% of it. So I'll show you what this looks like as I go through and do the turning. So there we go, a nice tight fit. So this is all set to go here but I'll show you the dust that's left on the lathe here. Just big chunks, no fine dust and that's what the floor looks like. So dust collection works well. I've got these all ready now but before I cut them off in the center here and on the ends what I'm doing is I'm going through the first finishing step because what I want to do is mount it back on the lathe to sand this back. It'll make sense once you see it all come together. It's one of the staining techniques I've learned over the years from a professional finisher. I use only the latest and greatest technology in stain. This is water-based and you can learn more about this on our stain matching course. This is a product that we send you a kit that is an introductory kit for stain matching and you've got samples of the key colors that we use most commonly here in our workshop. You can learn more about that at FixingFurniture.com I turned the tenon slightly larger on the lathe that way I can use a file to get a nice tight fit. I'm getting closer now. I've got all the parts that I need. What I need to do is drill out this area for the leg and I need to attach these pieces like this so I need to drill this. This gets into chair making techniques so I've got a few different ways that I do this. I'll show you how those pieces come together but once I've got all these holes drilled out including here in the center column then I can dry fit this to make sure everything fits the way it should. The most important tool in doing this work is a sliding t-bevel. This allows me to line this up on this line here and when I drill the new hole I'll hold it in place so I can get the drill at the right angle. Just when I thought it was getting easier there's a piece of metal in there and it looks like it's coming from a nail that's right there so I've got more problem solving to do. Well I've never encountered this before. That is a huge spike and you can barely see the nail head there so I've got two choices. I can either start excavating around here which will make a more visible scar on the edge to try and get under that head to start pulling it out or I think the route I might take is see if I can take my punch drill a hole through here parallel with that spike and see if I can get the punch here so I can get enough of the nail head to pull it out. Well it looks like the head's come out just a little bit but what's happening is because of the force put on the top here it's starting to get buried into the wood here so what I need to do is attack it from the other side here so I'll have to repair that damage anyway. I'll drill another hole here and see if I can work it out one side a bit at a time. Well this nail doesn't seem to be moving so I've got two options. Either I break this and glue it back together again which I don't really want to do or I can heat this nail up see if that'll expand the metal allow it to cool off and shrink and then come out. So I'm going to get up my heat gun because that's the least amount of damage I can do. I'll put an old screwdriver on the end here heat it up transfer that heat into that metal rod. Heating up this large spike didn't work like it does with screws so unfortunately that didn't loosen it up. I tried loosening up the split as well but these reinforcing rods are really working well. So I'm at a standstill. What do I do? How do I salvage this part? I'm going to stop the video right now because I want to hear from you. I want to hear your ideas on is there a way that I can salvage this. I don't think I've got all the great ideas. Put your ideas in the comment and when we come back I'll put this in part two and give credit to the person that helped me salvage this. Ultimately I'd like to salvage this if not I'm going to have to replace this with a new part. This is part of a stool that's very sentimental for the customer so ideally I salvage it instead of replace it. So in part two what we'll also do is go through I'll show you chair making techniques of how to connect these parts on the new turnings how we go through and finish it and then we can take a look at the two complete stools so you can see them finished here on the workbench. So please give me your comments. I'm going to read every single one of them. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you for watching Fixing Furniture.