Repairing a repair to old red cedar dresser

[Fuzzie]

We have an old red cedar dresser that has had some bodgie repairs done that now need repairing/restoration.

The stile on one door has split at some stage and a repair made by nailing through the edge to pull things together. This was probably never going to work. The crack doesn't appear to have been glued and has reopened over the years.

I'm wondering what to do here. I could squeeze some glue into the crack and clamp it up and hope it will fit back together nicely, but I'm guessing there's now at least some dirt or wax or something in there that is going to prevent things closing up invisibly.

To disassemble and make sure the joint is clean will require unmaking the current repair. It looks like 6 nails have been used down the edge, 4 thinnish cut head nails (or maybe wire) and 2 larger flat head nails. I'm a bit concerned about pulling this apart without causing further catastrophic damage. At least the nails look to have been driven mostly straight in rather than skewing them.

Does anybody have any tips on how to approach pulling this apart to inflict the least amount of collateral damage?

door1.jpgdoor2.jpgdoor3.jpg

[Evanism]

I'd firstly put a long clamp on it to test if its going to close up. If it does, inject some glue in the gap.

I use titebond in old plastic tomato sauce and mustard bottles (the soft squeezy kind). The lids twist a bit to open up. put the sauce with the nozzle pressed right up against the gap and squeeeezzzeeee it in. Do this right along the seam, then clamp closed. Clean up the squeeze out (hehe, the squeeze out squeezed in)

Id leave the nails etc. If aesthetics are a concern, punch them in and fill the holes. Make a mix of glue and dust obtained from an inconspicuous part of the cabinet.

It doesn't look that bad. I did one just last night as a commish. Checking it today and its pretty hard to see.

[RoyG]

One technique that I've found to be very good when you want to get glue into a tight fitting through crack like this one, is to:

1. Lay the door flat, maybe on some saw horses or something that will let you easily get to both the front and back side of the door whilst it's laying flat.
2. Get your workshop vacuum cleaner handy and ready to run. Don't have any floor cleaning attachments or anything fitted to the end of vacuum cleaner's hose.
3. What you do is lay a bead of glue along the crack on the top surface of the door.
4. Turn the vacuum cleaner on, and hold the vacuum cleaner's hose opening up against the underside of the crack. The vacuum will suck the glue down through the crack.
5. Move the vacuum cleaner hose back and forth along the length of the crack, until you've got glue coming out the underside of the crack.
6. Add more glue, if needed, along the crack on the top surface of the door, until you're satisfied that there is a good spread of glue along the entire length of the crack.
7. Clamp. Clean off the excess glue.
8. I've used this technique with Selley's Aquadhere, Titebond 3, and Titebond Liquid Hide Glue. All work OK, but glues with a longer working time (like the Titebond glues that I mentioned), will make the job easier.
9. You are bound to get some glue on the end of the vacuum cleaner hose, so don't use the Wife's good vacuum cleaner .....

Regards,

RoyG

[Xanthorrhoeas]

Personally, I do not like to leave added nails in place as they are inimicable to the piece of timber. So, unless you are going to cause a lot of damage by removing them (see suggested method below) it is better to remove them.

Also, as you mentioned, as it is an old "repair" it is inevitable that the crack has gathered some dust and probably some wax. If you did try to repair it with a modern adhesive you could easily make the situation worse if the PVA etc. made a partial connection but not a complete fix. I have often found this situation with old furniture that people have poured some PVA or even epoxy into the joint. the joint still fails but usually with extra damage and a lot more work to clean off the added adhesive.

Those modern adhesives are non-reversible so if you get it wrong/it doesn't work you have a much bigger problem than before. IMHO The Titebond liquid hide glue would be the only safe adhesive worth trying for the technique above because you could reverse it with hot water if it did not make a good joint or if it failed down the track. One of the rules of purist conservation/restoration is to only use reversible adhesives.

My recommendation, if the break is loose, is to gently "wiggle" the broken piece away from the rest of the door, gradually withdrawing the nails with the broken off piece. Some added leverage is useful as long as you use sacrificial timber pads for the leverage points, not the soft cedar door. Once you have the piece off you could either drive the nails back out, or, if that shows signs of breaking out a chunk of the surface, as often happens, you can drive them right through with a pin punch. If they wont come out cleanly then you will have to leave them but cut them off neat with the broken surface. Then clean both surfaces really well and dry-fit the join to ensure it is perfect before gluing the piece back on with hide glue and clamps.

You can easily fill the holes with cedar timber-coloured wax stick available from numerous suppliers and brands (Liberon is one brand but there are other, just as good ones).

Good luck.

[Fuzzie]

Yes. I think it has to come apart and be cleaned up before attempting to reglue. By the look of the different nails I'm guessing they are not all of the same age. Perhaps the original fix was glued with brads that didn't hold, then it failed again and some small cut nails were tried, finally someone hit it with the longer flat head nails to try and fix it.

[Fuzzie]

My first attempt was to lock a couple of quick clamps on the loose piece and then try to use another quick clamp in spreader mode to see if the broken bit could be pulled off easily. Unfortunately not. I then made up a few skinny sliding wedges out of soft pine and tapped them into the crack, from the rear and between the nails. This prised open enough of a gap that I could cut each nail with a hacksaw blade.

Once apart I could get enough purchase on the nail shanks left in the door to pull them out. On the broken piece I drilled a couple of small holes in a piece of pine matching the sizes of the nail heads and carefully position each nail head over a hole for support and used a nail punch to drive out length enough so I could pull the rest of the body out by the head.

There was minimal, if any, additional damage caused. I now have two pieces that fit nicely together, but they won't clamp up to an invisible join. Not surprising I suppose since I guess the original fix having been made with cut nails is probably going on 100 years old. There is some trace of glue in the join and accumulated gunk from years of being dusted and polished.

I'm guessing washing the surfaces with hot water and acetone to clean out any old adhesive is the next step.

I'm wondering if Titebond hide glue will actually be strong enough to repair this split alone. Given that the split is hinge side do you think it would be wise to also reinforce the repair? Screws seem an obvious choice, not nails. Or I guess I could glue up first, then after it has gone off, drill for some dowels and glue them in - no alignment problem.

Franklin.

[Evanism]

The clamping/spreader trick is a nifty one.

[Xanthorrhoeas]

I'm wondering if Titebond hide glue will actually be strong enough to repair this split alone. Given that the split is hinge side do you think it would be wise to also reinforce the repair? Screws seem an obvious choice, not nails. Or I guess I could glue up first, then after it has gone off, drill for some dowels and glue them in - no alignment problem.

Franklin.

Sounds like you are going really well.

Hide glue is very strong - there is a lot of very old furniture out there that still serves its purpose and is glued with hide glue. Think of things like early Victorian cedar dining chairs.

However, whether hide glue will give a good enough bond on its own will depend entirely on how good the match to the two pieces is. If the match is not good then there would obviously be some advantage to reinforcing the joint because hide glue is not renowned for its gap-filling properties. I think your suggestion of some dowels drilled in after you have glued is the best option, especially if you hand-make some cedar dowels for the purpose. If you wanted to be really fancy you could use stronger dowels and make cedar plugs to hide their entry point on the side of the door.

One other advantage of hide glue is that it doesn't interfere if you need to French polish over the join. Modern PVA's etc are not compatible/leave their mark when you polish.

I do know professional restorers who would use a coloured, gap-filling epoxy (epoxy mixed with earth colours to match the timber) but I won't do that in most circumstances because it is not reversible if I stuff-up or if the join breaks again. But, if the join between the broken off section and the door is really bad - lots of significant gaps, it may be something that you could consider along with your dowel reinforcement.

[Fuzzie]

Next hurdle. I assumed Masters carried all of the Titebond range and dropped in to buy some Liquid Hide glue. Unfortunately it looks like the carry all Franklin glue products except Hide Glue.

Next stop was to try the Gold Coast distributor listed on the titebond.com.au website. Fronted up to Nover&co outlet in Nerang to find they moved to Stayplton 12 months ago.

[Xanthorrhoeas]

Carba-tec have it in stock. Mail order is possible though their postage is expensive so best to combine with other items. You could also try real hide glue - the pearl glue that you mix in a double walled glue pot. My reading says that is superior to the Titebond version, and I use both. My experience with the Titebond liquid version is over too short a time (a couple of years) to make a comment on that, but I have used the original pearl hide glue for over 30 years with no failures, so can certainly vouch for it. I am not sure but UBeaut may sell the pearl glue. It was certainly available on eBay a couple of years ago when I purchased my last 2 kilos of it.

[Fuzzie]

OK, finally got back to trying to glue this up. I got hold of some of the sponsor's pearl hide glue via Timecon last time I was in Melbourne. I had a little play around working out how to make up a small batch etc and seeing how it worked on some scrap. This seemed to work OK on nicely planed edges for my tests so I bit the bullet and set up for the real thing this morning.

I made up a fresh little batch (5g in a disposable plastic cup) and assembled the clamps etc. Melted the glue and brushed it onto the cracked pieces and put things together. The crack seemed far better fitting when I had test dry clamped it, but kept slipping when glued and clamped. I started to worry the glue would gel too much before I was happy with the clamping, so in the end I stopped trying to worry it into place and am now just sitting around hoping things fit OK with my fingers crossed.

What is the usual sort of time hide glue joints need to be left clamped up?

[fletty]

.......... so in the end I stopped trying to worry it into place and am now just sitting around hoping things fit OK with my fingers crossed.

and.......?

[Xanthorrhoeas]

YES, it is very slippery stuff. Gelatine and all that, so you need your clamping set up - dry joint - beforehand, AND the B***l*dy stuff still slides on you. Extra clamps here NOW you shout - but you are the only one there so you get to it! I always do the full dry clamp-up first - mandatory, woodwork 101 stuff, but hide glue is SLIPPERY +. As I said, gelatine! But, it is a great adhesive, proven over 2000 years. PVA etc. can't come close.

I do hope that your glue-up went well. I have found it to do well in gap filling (though it is not meant to). If it did not, remember that, unlike any modern adhesive - all you need is some boiling water and you can try again! Unbeatable.

[Fuzzie]

It looks OK!

I mixed my hide glue by floating a little plastic shot glass in a coffee mug full of boiling water. I think the first batch I made for the trial glue up on test scraps was too hot. That glue took at least all overnight to set fully hard. For the final glue up batch I tempered the water in the mug with some cold water before melting the glue. This batch setup much quicker and the squeeze out was hard when I checked it just a couple of hours later.

The alignment looks good. I had 2 clamps across the door. Given the split is diagonally down the stile I had no way of stopping the joint sliding vertically under clamping pressure (which didn't happen during the dry run). Another clamp top to bottom would have helped and I had one I could have used, but it wasn't going to appear mid glueup, my brain and clamping space weren't all meshed into gear at the time.

As it was, I let some pressure off the clamps I had in place and slid the joint back to as good alignment I could make, which seemed to work. Only a gnat and a half hair out.

The next day I decided to reinforce the joint with a small dowel. I had some 1/4" dowels of Queensland maple I had made for pinning M&T joints of a previous project and drilled a hole just below the hinge location and tapped one in. The QM seems to match the Cedar well enough.

I have reinstalled the door but it is binding somewhere, which probably is part of the reason the stiles split originally. I thought it was just because the hinges were sunk tooo deep, but I have packed them out now and there is still some binding somewhere. I need to resolve that, but it is hard getting my head inside the cabinet to see what bits are rubbing when the door closes.

[Xanthorrhoeas]

You could try rubbing some white chalk on the door edge and see if it transfers at the binding points. The transfer will be only slight so good light is needed to spot the connection points.