The front bar and one leg have snapped off this chair and I’m not sure how to go about fixing it. Can I just glue it back together or will it need reinforcing? IMG_0861|375x500
A properly glued joint should be fine as long as the pieces fit together neatly and it’s clamped while it goes off
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Thanks! There’s quite a lot of old glue in there so I’ll scrape that out and have a got at gluing it back together.
Yeah just clean it out well enough and figure out a good way to clamp it well, it should be good. If you’d like to further reinforce, you can afterwards drill a hole through the joint and glue in dowel the same diameter as the hole.
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I probably would put some dowels at the joint before gluing for extra support as the joint endures the most strain in chairs. If you do not sit on it often it should be ok without it.
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If the wood that has broken off is a bit delicate / friable, then paraloid b72 is the best thing to use to hold it together. It’s a thermoplastic acrylic resin used for consolidation and as a structural adhesive by professional conservators. You could use it for the main joint too. It grabs but can be worked / positioned for 5 mins or so. If hold it firmly together for that 5 mins, then it’ll hold very solidly after that and will be more than strong enough (abt 20 kg per cm2 initially, though it gets stronger over time). So unless it’s going to be sat on by someone weighing 200 kg or so, it should hold. It can also be easily cleaned off with acetone. It’s fantastic for repairing most things.
It’s also reversible. If mess it up, then can use acetone to unstick and remove it.
Repair of fragile wood in furniture is one of the standard uses - see data sheet. It’s used e.g. in conserving delicate picture frames or museum antiques. It’s not expensive either. You can buy crystals to dissolve in acetone or buy a ready mixed tube.
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