How To Repair Cracks In Antique Wood Furniture

Furniture Crack Repair

Plagued by cracks in a piece of old furniture? Unless it's a museum slice, this elementary repair might fill the beak.

Plagued by cracks in a slice of old furniture? Unless it's a museum piece, this simple repair might fill the bill.

Quite often, cracks in old article of furniture arise from failed glue joints. Repairing these becomes a matter of cleaning out loose fibers and erstwhile glue, plumbing fixtures the parts, and gluing them back together. In many instances, a crack that doesn't occur at a joint can be repaired readily past cleaning, gluing, and clamping, too.

But the two cracks in the edge of the small table shown to a higher place defied gluing and clamping considering the tabletop was veneered both meridian and bottom. Pulling the cracks' edges together would require removing the veneer.

Because the table isn't a valuable antique, the repair could lean more toward the serviceable and less toward a museum-quality restoration. So, we decided to only fill the cracks.

Build a base of shavings

Generally, it'southward better to apply filler materials in thin layers. Wood move and other factors can crevice filler that's been applied too heavily.

To minimize the amount of filler in the crack, we glued some wood into the split offset, and and so smoothed a thin glaze of filler over the repaired surface. Airplane shavings proved a workable choice for woods packing, as shown in the photo beneath. After block-planing some fairly thick curls from a slice of walnut chosen to friction match the table's night finish, we moistened a few and stretched them out apartment to dry nether weights on the workbench.

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Mucilage plan shavings into the crack to provide a base for the filler. A knife helps push the sparse pieces into place. The fissure to the left of the knife has been trimmed and sanded already.

The curls didn't press completely flat, but came out straight enough that we could coat some with liquid hide glue and slide them into the cleft. Nosotros alternated layers of glue-coated and uncoated shavings, so dribbled mucilage forth the top of the wood-packed crack, letting information technology ooze down through the gaps.

After the mucilage dried, we trimmed the shavings flush with the table border, using a small chisel. Nosotros sanded the repair and the surrounding area with 100-grit sandpaper.

Elevation it off with woods filler

The repaired area showed numerous surface irregularities after sanding. To level and shine the surface, we applied wood filler, equally shown in the photo below.

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Smooth wood filler onto the repaired area after trimming the glued-in airplane shavings flush with the surface. Make sure to use a filler that volition accept stain. We chose a ii-role epoxy product.

For filler, we mixed epoxy wood rebuilder, post-obit the manufacturer's instructions. (We bought the two-function putty at a home center.) Other types of wood filler would piece of work, too.

And then, using a flexible plastic applicator, we spread a layer of filler over the repair and surrounding area. An old kitchen spatula or expired credit card will work fine for a spreader. If nix suitable is at hand, buy plastic spreaders for machine-torso filler at an auto-supply shop.

After the filler cured, we sanded it smooth with 100-grit sandpaper, feathering it into the adjacent wood. Finally, we block-sanded with grits from 150 to 320, which left the surface suitable for staining and finishing.