Repair Your Wooden Furniture

If your wooden furniture is beginning to fall apart, you can fit it yourself. When you know a few trade secrets, you can fix anything, from chairs to drawers.

Generally, don’t use nails, screws, metal binding plates or angle irons to repair furniture. Most repairs of this type won’t last, with one exception. Some furniture is designed to be joined by screws. Some glued furniture has screw joints where chair arms attach to the backrest. And some drawers are held together with small nails. Nails and screws, of course, will work on these.

The most important thing to remember is to fix small problems before they become big problems. Prolonged use of furniture puts pressure on loosening joints and is the most common cause when furniture breaks. The best way to repair it is to re-glue the joints or cracks.

Before you glue, first remove the old glue. Glue works by soaking in and attaching to wood fibers. No matter how strong the new glue is, it’ll have almost no holding power if you apply it over the old glue. So, scrape off the old with a sharp knife, chisel, file or small paint scraper.

Carefully remove only the glue and not the wood. If you don’t, you’ll have gaps when you re-glue. Another key is to use the right kind of glue. For most furniture, ordinary white or yellow glue does the trick. The yellow is stronger and resists moisture better but begins to set in just 8 or 10 minutes.

So, if you need more time to assemble and clamp, the white glue will give you about 15 minutes. Avoid other glues, especially the super-bonding agents, because they can’t penetrate the wood.

When you’ve applied the glue and assembled the pieces in place, keep the joints under pressure until the glue dries. Clamps work well, but not on irregularly shaped furniture. For this type of repair, use a creative approach.

You can use sticks and boards as wedges, books or tools as weights. And elastic tie-downs are very helpful with cumbersome items such as chairs. Whatever method you use, just make sure the pressure is strong enough to bring the two pieces completely together, because glue has almost no strength for bridging gaps.