A REPAIR WORTH MAKING
Mid-century modern furniture can fetch a pretty penny these days
A how-to guru advises a reader on the best way to fix up a drawer from a beloved mid-century bedroom set.
Q I inherited my parents’ mahogany bedroom set, made by the Rway Furniture Co. I have the brochure where my mother circled the pieces she wanted and noted how much they cost: US$536 for a headboard, double dresser, mirror, chest of drawers and two night tables. At the time, my father made about US$3,400 a year with the federal government. This set was a major investment. The set survived five moves, finally to my father’s assisted-living residence. A drawer broke during that move, and the moving company did a poor repair using Gorilla
Glue. And a leg on a night table snapped. Can the damage be repaired?
A Yes, these pieces can be repaired. And given the price of mid-century modern furniture these days, the cost probably would be worthwhile even if these pieces didn’t have sentimental value, which clearly they do. The website Chairish (chairish.com) lists an Rway dresser for US$520, and other Rway dressers much higher, depending on the style.
Repairing the drawer is probably the simpler job, said Yasser Haridi, owner of Antiques & Furniture Restoration, a company in Virginia. The old glue would need to be removed. Then the drawer front could be reglued, using ordinary yellow wood glue, also known as PVA or polyvinyl acetate glue, and plenty of clamps. Haridi uses Titebond Interior Original Wood Glue ($12.99 for a 16-ounce bottle at bestbuy.ca, online only).
The biggest challenge is getting out all of the old glue, especially given that there isn’t a joint that just needs to be nudged loose and then scraped clean. The glue is in the drawer front’s inner core, which is probably a type of particleboard, with veneers of solid wood on the front and back. The challenge is to get out the glue without also excavating the wood fibres.
Gorilla Glue is a brand that today offers numerous adhesives, but when people say they have used “Gorilla Glue,” they’re usually referring to Original Gorilla Glue, which behaves differently than yellow wood glue in a couple of critical ways. As the manufacturer states it on its website, “The water activated polyurethane formula expands into materials to form an incredibly strong bond to virtually anything.” Translated by Haridi: “So if you don’t get the two areas wet and they are not clamped very well, the glue foams and pushes the pieces apart.”
In a way, it’s good that the moving company probably did the job wrong because spraying water into a crack in particleboard probably would have caused the particleboard to swell and become permanently distorted. The lack of clamps probably made the crack even wider than it was originally.
Acetone (or acetone-based nail polish remover), dissolves Gorilla Glue, but it wouldn’t be smart to use that solvent on your drawer. Acetone would almost certainly ruin the finish.
Instead, the best method is to scrape off the glue. Haridi said he would use a razor blade and dentist’s tools. A novice could probably tackle this on their own, he said. “It’s a simple fix, if someone has the patience to clean out all the glue.”
Repairing the broken leg is trickier because the break didn’t make a clean cut. Haridi said he’d trim the broken end and splice on a new section of leg, assuming you don’t have the piece that broke off. But just gluing it on wouldn’t be enough because the two pieces both have what woodworkers call “end grain.” Wood fibres are like straws, and glue holds well when a joint involves gluing the sides of the straws together, but it has
The challenge is to get out the glue without also excavating the wood fibres.
little strength if you are trying to glue the ends of straws together.
He’d get around this problem by drilling into the ends of both the leg stub and the patch piece and then fitting a sturdy dowel made of oak or walnut into the mating holes. Glued in place, that dowel would give the joint plenty of strength. This repair involves more woodworking skill and would probably take more time.
He estimated the price at US$475, including replacement wood, a metal tip and finish touch-up.
To make a leg repair even more secure, especially on chairs or other furniture that might be subjected to more force, some furniture repairers make angled cuts on both the leg stub and the add-on piece, in addition to inserting a dowel at the centre of the joint. But it’s very difficult to line up holes cut into angled ends. So the trick with this approach is to first cut both pieces straight across but overly long, drill into those cuts, then make the angled cuts. The drilled holes can then be lengthened, if necessary.
If you have good woodworking skills and want to tackle the leg repair on your own, the website TableLegs.com is a source for replacement legs to use for patching and for metal tips.
The Washington Post