Last week while out and about, Chuck sent a picture of a small kids’ table one of his neighbors was throwing away. It looked a little rough for wear but still in decent shape. He hauled it back to his shop where it awaited transport to my shop. He then went back and got the two rather beat-up chairs that went with it.
The table top had a butcher-block style hardwood top that was in desperate need of refinishing, and the legs on it had to go. The chairs could either be cannibalized to make one good one as one was missing its seat and the other had back issues — or, with a little time and effort, I could salvage both and have the whole set. I opted for both.
The first step was to fix the most troublesome area, which was the chair with back problems. Because I didn’t want to make a whole new top piece and I was going to repaint those parts of the chairs anyway, I decided to chisel out the chip so it was flat on two sides and make a wedge to fit in the gap. Once cut, fitted, filled, and painted, no one will ever be able to tell anyway.
Next the chair with the seat bottom missing required a new seat. So with a little cut-up 3″ oak trim that had a run or two on the jointer, I glued up a few pieces that would make up the seat and set it in clamps.
From that point I spent a little time cutting and gluing up a few legs and sanding down the top with the random orbit sander, and it was time to let the glue set and call it a day.
Next up comes the fun part — making all of this mess go back together and look like it had never been apart in the first place.