A friend asked me if I could repair a chair. Rumor is that the chair is old and I have reason to believe it.
01_full_chair.jpg
The top cross piece is screwed in place, nothing else. The portion where the back meets the seat is also screwed in with two screws (I have removed two screws and loosened two). Also, the rear pieces on the left and right are screwed to the seat.
So, I removed the top cross piece.
02_chair_top.jpg
The horizontal pieces that connect to the left and right pieces on the top, are morticed in placed. Unfortunately, the top cross piece has snapped at the mortises.
Here is the two top portions up close and pulled away. This is the best one in that it actually seems to fit and mate well with the vertical back portion.
04_chair_broken.jpg
The other side, however, does not mate as well, and someone tried to drive a small finishing nail in through the top at an angle to hold it in place. This is a back view. A piece of wood has broken out.
03_chair_broken.jpg
and here is the top of that.
05_chair_broken.jpg
This is the bottom of the chair
06_chair_bottom.jpg
So, the first question is.... how to best repair this? I lack the skills, equipment, and time to attempt to create a new back piece.
The bottom rungs are glued, so I cannot simply pull this thing apart. Is this likely to be hide glue so that I could pull them apart with a heat gun maybe?
If I did not care at all how it looked, I would simply drill through the vertical back portion and into the horizontal piece and insert a dowel. This feels tricky because the back piece is not that thick so I can probably not get away with a dowel greater 1/4" and I would need to nail it. This is more difficult since the back is curved so things are not at right angles. I also considered drilling dowel holes, but I cannot move horizontal piece sufficiently to get in there and drill the hole for the dowel, especially into the vertical piece.... and that hole would need to be perfect and at an angle for this to work. Oh, and then it would just be held in place with a 1/4" inch dowel, perhaps two of them. I also considered using a steel dowel since that would not break, but it might simply rip out of the chair back if pressure is put on it, hard to say.
I could also just try epoxy, but in the past, someone did try to glue this back, and it obviously did not hold.