Repair of wooden furniture
Repair of wooden furniture is a task, although not of prime necessity, but sooner or later everyone has to face it.
You can, of course, without further ado turn to experts, or you can try to repair the furniture with your own hands. A man who is not lazy is quite capable of it.
Repair of wooden furniture, as a rule, boils down to the elimination of certain defects of wooden joints, which tend to weaken over time.
How to eliminate this trouble and repair your favorite locker, wardrobe or chair, we will tell in this article.
The design of wooden furniture includes individual elements connected as collapsible joints – screeds, bolts and nuts, and not collapsible – tires, or wooden nails for glue.
Very often, furniture damage occurs due to breakage of the connecting elements or due to the occurrence of backlash.
If cracks, chips of nests and spikes, backlashes appeared in the joints, they need to be repaired immediately after a breakdown is detected, otherwise the mating parts may break, and repair will become much more difficult.
When spikes play, the connection must first be disassembled and cleaned of layers of old glue.
Wooden furniture parts are most often glued with wood glue in the form of granules or tiles, which are crushed and put in a tin can, pouring cold boiled water for 12 hours.
The water level in the jar should be a centimeter above the level of glue.
You need to heat the jar in a “water bath”, i.e. by putting a jar in a pot of 3-4 stones 2-3 centimeters high.
The height of the walls of the pan and its diameter should be at least 5 centimeters greater than the height and diameter of the jar with adhesive solution. Pour water into the pan to the water level in the jar with the solution, and heat it to 80 degrees Celsius, stirring the adhesive solution with a sliver all the time.
In the event that a lot of foam begins to form in the bank, it must be removed and the water in the pan heated to boiling, keeping the boiling for 1-2 minutes.
The readiness of the glue is checked by applying it to the sliver – if it flows down with a continuous stream, the glue is ready. If it has clots, heating should be continued by adding hot water to a jar.
If the glue is too liquid and drains quickly, add tiles or granules to the jar.
The quality of the glue is determined as follows: a warm drop of glue is taken between the index finger and thumb, squeeze them and spread. If they diverge with difficulty, and between them appear stiff long threads, the glue is good.
If you don’t have carpentry glue at hand and the repair volume is small, the glue can be replaced with universal glue of the type “Supercement”, “Moment”, “Universal”, or BF-2. You can use synthetic glue for wood, it has high indicators of frost and moisture resistance, and therefore it can be used to repair country furniture, or furniture used on balconies, porches, etc.
Remember also that PVA glue is not compatible with carpentry glue.
During sifting, dust, wood flour and large sawdust are removed. If there is a large gap between the spike and the base part, the spike can be glued with cotton or linen cloth soaked with glue. Synthetic fabrics for these purposes should not be used.
If the gap is very large, the end face of the tenon is cut and driven into it made of solid wood wedges. The wedges are driven into the through spike immediately after gluing is completed, and in the countersunk it is inserted before assembly.
Choose the right size of the wedge: too large wedges can damage the spike or lining of the furniture part.
If the glue is applied in a very thin layer, or if it is too liquid, a very fragile seam is formed. However, a very thick seam is also unstable, it cracks during shrinkage. Therefore, great attention should be paid to the thoroughness of spreading furniture parts from all sides.
Parts must be greased with bristle brushes using thin brushes for narrow edges, and grooves can be smeared by applying glue from a plastic vessel through a straw or rod from a ballpoint pen.
Immediately after assembly, the freshly glued product must be compressed in order to achieve high quality gluing. For compression, weights, twisting from a rope, clamps are used.
The load on the parts must be uniform to protect the furniture from damage.
Having squeezed the product, it must be left in this position for a day, and then, having removed the loads, ropes and clamps, it is recommended that the furniture be kept for another day before use.
If the spike or part of it breaks, the broken section can be replaced with an insertion spike made of the same wood species, with the same moisture level and preferably with the same fiber direction.
If it is impossible to pick up such a bar, the insertion spike is made of wood more solid than the part that you are repairing.
Usually, a nest cut out instead of the old spike is made the same size as the old one.
The plug-in spike is glued into a new socket, held for two days and connected to the old part.