Damage to a chair can happen when a seated person leans back and balances on the back legs, causing the back frame to break over the seat itself.
Front legs can also break below the seat. This often occurs when the chair is slid over a carpet without the person using his or her legs to release pressure.
I often receive a piece on which repairs have previously been made inadequately, with screws or pins and worse, with the wrong glue. “Gorilla” glue can be of some use because it sets very fast and remains waterproof, but it creates a foam that is not as strong as epoxy glue. The latter is correctly categorized as a “gap filling glue.”
The following example is one of these cases. Previously the chair had been repaired with Gorilla glue. We had to clean the broken gap and even file a bit of the destroyed fracture. This left many gaps. We used shellac to prime the surfaces, because this is reversible with the use of alcohol. Then, epoxy putty was used to re-create the broken joint. After gluing, the excess epoxy was filed and sanded to the correct profile. A lacquer finish matched the other leg.
