I have an ancient and rather ugly office chair which I love to pieces. Unfortunately, on Thursday morning, the chair attempted to make that literal, as I sat down and heard a nasty splintering sound. Now, I got this thing secondhand, and it’s always had a vertical split up one wooden leg. My brother had run four large carriage bolts through it in an attempt to hold it together, which in hidsight turned out to be a bad idea, as one half of the leg had split in the opposite direction along the line of the first two bolts. ☹️

Removing the bolts, applying a rather considerable amount of wood glue and some dowels, then clamping it, letting it dry, and cleaning up got me to the point shown in the picture (larger version here )

What I need to know is, is there anything I can do to structurally reinforce this thing any further, short of replacing either that leg (beyond my skill level at the moment) or the entire base (a new one would have to be shipped up from the US)? In particular, would “splinting” it with a piece of new wood along the damaged side (or pieces along both sides) help keep it from tearing itself apart? Or should I just redrill the hole for the castor further away from the end, put a couple of C-clamps on, and hope it holds long enough for a new base to arrive?

I want my chair back. 😭

  • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyzEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Dowels glued in place will almost certainly be stronger than the bolts. However, depending on whether you care how pretty or ugly it is, it might be worthwhile to get 2-3 large hose clamps to wrap around the joined pieces, and cinch them up tight. That should provide support around the wood to minimize the chance of the wood trying to split out in the same direction as before.

    Note that it might help to show a picture of how things are supposed to go together? I originally thought these were two separate pieces which mated together (which is why I suggested gluing dowels through “both” pieces), but I just realized that it is actually two separate shots of the same piece, so I’m not quite sure what this is supposed to be attached to.