How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the
chair is being held together by the pins. The whole chair racks forward
and back by about a foot (like a recliner) apparently because the
mortise and tenon joints are severely worn from years of use with broken
glue joints. How can I fix this? The first thing that comes to mind is
filling the mortise with epoxy and clamping the chair back together.
Will that hold? The idea is to fill the empty space in the joints worn
with epoxy.

Thanks,
Scott

How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

On Sat, 08 May 2004 20:57:29 -0400, Scott Duncan
wrote:


My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the
chair is being held together by the pins. The whole chair racks forward
and back by about a foot (like a recliner) apparently because the
mortise and tenon joints are severely worn from years of use with broken
glue joints. How can I fix this? The first thing that comes to mind is
filling the mortise with epoxy and clamping the chair back together.
Will that hold? The idea is to fill the empty space in the joints worn
with epoxy.

Thanks,
Scott



this can be a viable last ditch repair. note that the chair will not
be repairable again.
if there is as much slop in the jointery as it sounds like, you will
likely have to add some fiber to the epoxy

How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

Bridger writes:


My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the
chair is being held together by the pins. The whole chair racks forward
and back by about a foot (like a recliner) apparently because the
mortise and tenon joints are severely worn from years of use with broken
glue joints. How can I fix this? The first thing that comes to mind is
filling the mortise with epoxy and clamping the chair back together.
Will that hold? The idea is to fill the empty space in the joints worn
with epoxy.

Thanks,
Scott



this can be a viable last ditch repair. note that the chair will not
be repairable again.
if there is as much slop in the jointery as it sounds like, you will
likely have to add some fiber to the epoxy



Someone makes a fiber that wraps the end of the tenon before it is reglued. I
think that works with regular glues, so a search might be in order.

He might start with this series:
http://antiquerestorers.com/Articles...e/FTT_0698.htm

Or he can just Google on "chair repair" including the quotes and pick and
choose what is needed.

Charlie Self
"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today." Will Rogers

How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

If you can get the chair apart, cover the tenon with pieces of veneer or
the iron on tape they use for edging plywood, and use a hot iron to stick
them down.

"Scott Duncan" wrote in message
...

My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the

How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

Please do not even try using iron on tape it is a disaster waiting to
happen.There are many other ways of building the material back up that will
not seal the wood the glue used for edge tape will seal the pours of the
wood and not allow wood glue to bind to each other. The edge tape glue has
very little holding power or shear strength.
There are many other ways of building the material back up
IE: cutting the existing tennon down 1/16 on all sides making a new mortise
to go over the tennon and then resizing to fit the old mortise after
cleaning it up and re squaring it.
"Anne Watson" wrote in message
hlink.net...
If you can get the chair apart, cover the tenon with pieces of veneer or
the iron on tape they use for edging plywood, and use a hot iron to stick
them down.

"Scott Duncan" wrote in message
...

My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the

How to fix old chair with worn mortise and tenon joints?
 

Some of the problem here seems to be that the mortises are probably no
longer straight sided. The racking has been working on an edge or
face to make it angle away from the bottom. Same with the tenon.
Given the now odd shape, perhaps cutting the mortise slightly larger,
filling it in with a block of wood, then going back and recutting the
mortise would fix that, Just about same thing with the tenon.
Carefully check that all four faces are perpendicular to the shoulder.
If not, make them so and then add veneer as needed. The new mortise
should be sized to the now fixed tenon.

It's a lot of work.


On Sun, 09 May 2004 02:17:02 GMT, "Anne Watson"
wrote:

If you can get the chair apart, cover the tenon with pieces of veneer or
the iron on tape they use for edging plywood, and use a hot iron to stick
them down.

"Scott Duncan" wrote in message
...

My sisters has the old, possibly antique, chair with mortise and tenon
joints pinned my finish nails. The glue failed many years ago and the