Hi All
Just for fun and nostalgia I want to repair an old teak? chair. It’s actually our old “captain’s“ chair that we used on our pontoon boat/barge (that has since departed) that got us to and from our cottage for 15 years.
The seat slats (C) have screw holes through them to secure to the seat frame. I’d like to keep these slats. I’m wondering if I can just use outdoor glue in the cracks and clamp them. Think that would hold?
Id like to do the same thing on the seat frame (D) where they cracked at the tongue and grove (it that is the right name for it).
Then I’d like to repair the old screw holes (not pictured) in the seat frame where the screws secure the seat slats to. I’ve watched a number a videos. Bondo, toothpicks, dowel. I’m leaning to dowel. Any thoughts?
Thank for any input!
Replies
No glue will repair those cracks, they would need cleaning. As for the screw holes, they probably had plugs to cover the screw head and those are long gone. If you have a table router, some teak and a 3/8 plug cutter you could rout a 1/2 wide slot to remove the screw hole area at the end of each slat and glue a 1/2 strip of wood, sand even and drill new holes. For cracks, you could rout a 1/4 inch slot to remove the crack and fill with a 1/4 inch strip.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I don’t have a router. Maybe I’ll make jig for the table saw and see if I can make it work. I’ll have to locate some teak.
I tried glueing and clamping a couple of them last night, I’ll see how that does.
Good excuse to buy a router!
I would run a saw down the splits to clean them out and square them up. Then epoxy a strip of teak into the kerf. Then drill out the screw holes and epoxy in a teak dowel plug (shop made from scrap). Then drill pilot holes for new stainless screws.
Ok, so I was able to spend some time on this again.
A router wasn’t in the budget so I got creative with the table saw. I clamped together the seat strips (A) then clamped those to a long straight edge (B). This allowed me to run the strips through the saw multiple times to get a roughly 1/2” by 3/4” notch in each of the strips that were all the same.
While not a professional result, I think they turned out ok.
Now on to screw holes in the seat rail that the strips attach to. I don’t have the dowel plug maker. I don’t think there is a work around without that but I’ll think on it for a bit!
Thanks for the help.
If you have a dado stack and the piece is straight you could cut a groove the length of the holes and their depth and glue in a filler strip. Unless the crack is really deep that problem would be solved too.
Work glue into the cracks and drive ( with glue) a golf tee into the hole. Try to find golf tees with no finish on them. Clamp the cracks flush. I've fixed many screw holes using golf tees.
I have made dowels / plugs by drilling the desired diameter into a piece of boiler plate cut a length of square stock just slightly over size - ease the corners with ,well anything ,a plane ,spoke shave, file ,sand paper and drive the wood through the hole. A fresh drilled hole will be sharp enough. Plug cutters , dowel making tools come in standard sizes. Drill bits come in all sizes.
So I got a chance to work on the chair some more.
I decided to take two of the suggestions to fix the screw holes. I used dowel on one part and cutout and replaced a strip one the other part. (There is a front and back support for the seat strips to attach. I could have used the same approach on each but wanted to try my hand at both options)
Since I don’t have a tool for making dowel and didn’t want to spend the money on something that I don’t know how many times I’d use it, i decided to make my own dowel. I used a planer blade clamped to scrap wood with a hole drilled through it (the wood). Not my idea. It worked ok but I wouldn’t want to be needing to make a large quantity of dowel with it.
Results turned out ok.
My next steps will be to treat the wood with something then figure out how to replace the bar that the seat swivels on to fold the chair. The original bar was (not sure the word) rounded on the end the end to make an head instead of using a nut. I’d like to try doing a similar solution.
Anyhow, here are the results from fixing the screw holes.
It's looking good. Keep up the good work.
If you have any pieces that no longer fit together snugly, either fill the gaps with wood slivers or use epoxy with a filler like sanding dust or filler material provided by the epoxy companies. Epoxy without filler will not fill gaps with sufficient strength.