Here's a quick summary of the chair project.
Since the back came apart I spent some time trying to figure out why there was so much damage. Finally it seemed that at some point in the past the seat frame was reset but not closed properly which resulted in the two rear uprights being too far apart at the top. This put everything into tensile stress and resulted in the major damage to the joints holding the top cross piece. That then cascaded and caused damage to the lower crosspiece and the two rear centre uprights. To top it off, there are signs of fire damage to the centre uprights as well.
Previous attempts at repair were less than professional involving 'rubber' glue, pieces of fabric, woodscrews and lots of lacquer which appeared to have been splashed on very haphazardly. This poor chair has not been treated well over the years.
So, the repair strategy was to bring the main uprights back into line so there would be no stress on the upper cross piece and then see where things went from there. One of the centre uprights had a badly broken tenon so I had to repair that. It turned out that the two main uprights were not the same length - 2mm difference. This added a lot of downward pressure when it had previously been forced together and this added to the damage to the centre uprights and the lower cross piece. I also found lots of hair cracks along the grain each of the back pieces so plenty of thin superglue was wicked into them to help achieve some structural soundness.
Next I rebuilt the joint between the left upright and the top cross piece. The tenon had been ripped off so I had to make a mortice in both pieces and use a floating tenon to complete the joint. I hummed and hahed over the top right joint as this was a real mess. In the end, in order to preserve some of the history of the chair, I used a metal pin to provide the structural strength and plenty of dual part epoxy to fill the voids.
I used a belt clamp to hold things together for the main glue up and then got on with the cosmetic clean up. It still looks pretty banged up but it should stay together now and hopefully will last a while.
The finish is very delicate - flakes off easily. I'll think about that later on.
Next I need to fix the seat itself which has some bad cracks in it. These are the result of the same previous repair not mating the seat with the frame underneath thus allowing the seat to flex when it shouldn't. That will have to wait until I get back into production again.
Interesting project though - here are some photos (two separate uploads - best viewed in reverse order - sorry about that).
Cheers, John
Pictures re-ordered. - Joe
Since the back came apart I spent some time trying to figure out why there was so much damage. Finally it seemed that at some point in the past the seat frame was reset but not closed properly which resulted in the two rear uprights being too far apart at the top. This put everything into tensile stress and resulted in the major damage to the joints holding the top cross piece. That then cascaded and caused damage to the lower crosspiece and the two rear centre uprights. To top it off, there are signs of fire damage to the centre uprights as well.
Previous attempts at repair were less than professional involving 'rubber' glue, pieces of fabric, woodscrews and lots of lacquer which appeared to have been splashed on very haphazardly. This poor chair has not been treated well over the years.
So, the repair strategy was to bring the main uprights back into line so there would be no stress on the upper cross piece and then see where things went from there. One of the centre uprights had a badly broken tenon so I had to repair that. It turned out that the two main uprights were not the same length - 2mm difference. This added a lot of downward pressure when it had previously been forced together and this added to the damage to the centre uprights and the lower cross piece. I also found lots of hair cracks along the grain each of the back pieces so plenty of thin superglue was wicked into them to help achieve some structural soundness.
Next I rebuilt the joint between the left upright and the top cross piece. The tenon had been ripped off so I had to make a mortice in both pieces and use a floating tenon to complete the joint. I hummed and hahed over the top right joint as this was a real mess. In the end, in order to preserve some of the history of the chair, I used a metal pin to provide the structural strength and plenty of dual part epoxy to fill the voids.
I used a belt clamp to hold things together for the main glue up and then got on with the cosmetic clean up. It still looks pretty banged up but it should stay together now and hopefully will last a while.
The finish is very delicate - flakes off easily. I'll think about that later on.
Next I need to fix the seat itself which has some bad cracks in it. These are the result of the same previous repair not mating the seat with the frame underneath thus allowing the seat to flex when it shouldn't. That will have to wait until I get back into production again.
Interesting project though - here are some photos (two separate uploads - best viewed in reverse order - sorry about that).
Cheers, John
Pictures re-ordered. - Joe
Time flies like an arrow, fruitflies like a banana!
