deconstruction

December 2, 2009



So today I spent my time disassembling the overall chair. It is in poor shape, scratched all over and missing much of the hardware and screws it originally had. Disassembly took about 30 minutes and I was careful to document where each of the pieces, screws, bracket when. Originally, I am fairly certain this chair never had a bracket in the center of the back panel. It appears that through ware and love this chairs prior owner broke the side mounts and the chair tilted back off its proper access. They must have lost the mounts and added some other screws or the folks that reupholstered it added the bracket. Either way I am fairly certain it didn’t have this bracket in the center of the bottom and was improperly repaired with a drill hole placed in the center bottom.

Once I disassembled the chair I took the ply panels and gave them the once over with my orbital sander with 120 grit paper. During this process I noticed some sanding/refinishing had been attempted in advance but it was not done correctly. There were a lot of subsurface gouges that I needed to carefully buff out. A few hours later and I had the ply pieces fully restored back to bare wood, most of the scratches I was able to buff away so that you could not tell of the damage with the naked eye. The bases of both the chair and ottoman were in rough shape. I cleaned them up with the orbital sander and assessed exactly what needed epoxy repair.

Epoxy repair is a common wood restoration process. It can restore even the worst damage to wood. In this case I used epoxy to repair areas of this chair where the ply had separated, where holes had been drilled or where excessive wear had taken place, eg chips to the edges. Epoxy repair is relatively easy, you mix epoxy to spec and add sanding dust to it. The sanding dust mirrors the color and finish of the wood you are repairing. You simply mix up the epoxy parts, A & B plus the sanding dust to the constancy of peanut butter. You will need to work quickly once part A&B of the epoxy are mixed. You only have a few minutes to work with the stuff. The hotter the outside temp the faster the epoxy will set. Use this mixture just like you would use wood patch. It is 100% stronger than wood patch and the color will match.