Repairing Wooden Chair Rung or Spindle

From formal dining rooms to country kitchens, wooden chairs are the standard in American homes. Unfortunately, even the best quality chairs tend to loosen up with time if the kids tilt them back on two legs, and just dragging them from room to room for a couple decades can do it as well. Even if you catch the problem fairly early, when the rung or spindle is just loose, putting in new glue and clamping the chair back together may not create a lasting repair. You're kind of stuck gluing over the old glue, which won't hold as well since it's not as porous as wood. If you sand the old glue off, you're just making the peg a looser fit in the hole. Cheaper chairs have the rails installed with brads or staples.

Runtime 2:30



Hub Kirkpatrick doesn't mess around, he glues the rung back in with liquid nails and then pins it in place with a wood screw through the leg. He drills a little pilot hole first to keep the screw from cracking the wood which he identifies as oak in this case, using what appears to be a Yankee push drill. My favorite part of the repair is that he doesn't countersink the head into the leg, he just leaves it sticking out. This is a repair that's intended to keep the chair together, and it wouldn't make sense to go over the top hiding the repair on what's consumer grade chair.

Runtime 0:13



I included this video of kids fooling around with a collapsing chair in a school because I seem to remember doing something similar way back when. In this case, it's a setup prank with newer metal stuff. The old oak furniture in New England schools seemed to last forever, in come cases, I'm sure it was part of the capital budget and never needed replacing. You can always repair wood furniture if you don't lose the parts, providing you're willing to use pegs or screws when gluing and clamping won't get the job done. Never try to repair a chair with nails. Furniture is made out of hardwood, and a regular nail will just cause the wood to crack.