Thread: Dining table - is this salvagable?

I would think you have a chance,if you could get a flexible saw started you could work around and cut it off,may take a while.
After it's off,clean up the frame,fix the crack and away you go.
It may be worth to check out what type of glue has been used,maybe a bit of water on it to see if it softens,good luck
Please keep us up todate on how you go.

Remove the legs and any screws (it looks like it may be screwed as well) The frame may come away relatively easily. A bit of persuasion may be required. Salvage the frame or build a new one, reattach the top with buttons after glueing and clamping the crack. Nothing to lose. The crack will only get worse as the top moves. Or tries to.

What sort of glue is it? It looks like gap filler/silicone to me.

I'd be pretty certain that the white glue is just aged PVA. It could be a good excuse to buy a multitool (like the cheap ozito unit) and spend an hour or so cutting through it all.

I am also thinking along the same lines to take the top and frame apart. If it does work out then you have fixed the table if not you still have the old table to use.

Just about anything is salvageable if you have the time, will & skill.

That table looks like it was made by a structural engineer who overdosed on steroids & forgot to read the manual on wood movement with moisture changes... As NCArcher has noted, it looks like there are screws in deep pockets through the frame. If the maker had stuck with those & skipped the glue, you may not have had this problem - they allow a bit more movement.

As the others have suggested, you'll need to get the top free before you can make any permanent repairs. Because the crack has been there a long time, it's bound to have crud in it, so merely running glue in & clamping will probably not give you a very good bond. But it may hold enough, & if you use buttons or any attachment method that allows it to expand & contract with the moisture cycles when you re-attach it, at least it shouldn't get any worse. If the crack were straight & parallel to the sides, cutting & re-joining would be a better fix, but glueing plus some butterfly keys across the crack (underneath) is another alternative.

You said you wanted to shrink it, so maybe you can simply cut the crack off. However, looks like that frame/skirt will be a challenge to shrink - that may need a total re-make if you want to reduce the size of your table..

Cheers,

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I will have another look at it when the weather cools down to just hot.

Yes it looks like white PVA glue to me. As to wetting it what is the process? Spray bottle, dropper, wet rag?

Yes there are a lot of screws holding it together and intially I thought I would just have to remove them and away I went.

The masking tape on top shows the width I would cut out to remove the cracked board. It starts at one end at the join between 2 boards and runs along that for a while then it goes diagonally across one board and has not reached the other end of the table yet. If I cut out that board it gives me a straight edge to glue and reduces the width by the right amount.

The frame itself didn't look that hard to modify once it is in pieces as there is no complex joinery that I can see. Just some grooves in the ends of the rails for the diagonal brace to lock into. Even I should be able to manage that he says

Why why why, why do people do stuff like that?

Originally Posted by Wongo

Why why why, why do people do stuff like that?

To give us something to moan about on a hot day?

Originally Posted by Wongo

Why why why, why do people do stuff like that?

'Cos they don't know any better, Wongo. (I committed similar crimes against wood back in my early days of wodworking ).

Be patient, & keep up the mantra (everyone repeat after me): "Wood is hygroscopic. Wood expands & contracts with changes in humidity. It will always do this no matter what you do to try & prevent it."

Some day, everyone will know....

Cheers,

Yeah but these guys are selling their work. Bloody cowboys.

If it's PVA, try brushing some cleaning vinegar on. It should soften the glue. then you might try opening it up with am old chisel or a soft-faced hammer. Keep putting the vinegar on as it soaks in.
Caution - try this on a spot where it won't be obvious first - vinegar will turn some woods black.

Originally Posted by Wongo

Yeah but these guys are selling their work. Bloody cowboys.

Yes, I would expect a better level of understanding from someone selling stuff. But they're far from alone. I've repaired a few items that were made to self-destruct. The interesting thing is that the owners are seldom pleased when you point out that their treasured piece of furniture is actually poorly made.

By coincidence, I just repaired a chair for DIL. It is part of a dining table & chair set made from recycled wood - the sort where the original peeling paint is left on, & pieces of different thickness are joined, so they crudely level it out with the disc sander (running 60 grit discs). Large holes that something might catch in were filled with filler - the kind that quickly softens again when wet, as they discovered when something leaked water over the table& it wasn't noticed for an hour or so. I think you call this "shabby chic" style, though you & I would probably call it something quite different. DIL thinks it's beautiful....

One back leg of this chair had shattered, & I was asked if I could stick it back together. A quick look at it told me it was a replacement job - the piece of wood used was some Qld Maple, of all things, most of the rest of the wood is nondescript hardwood. This piece had amazing curly grain, which could have been terrific in some other application, but here, it meant there was short grain all along the part of the leg that needed the most strength. It had shattered "real good" & glueing was out of the question, so I made a new one from some old hardwood I happened to have lying around. Stupid me! I used the good leg to trace a template for the replacement, without checking. I took measurements for the mortises (it was actually mortised!) from the intact leg too. You can probably imagine some of the expletives emanating from the shed when I discovered the two legs were quite different, & my new leg would not fit without a nasty gap in the shoulder of the side rail.

Oh yeah, you were waiting for it -the 25mm thick wooden seat is glued cross-grain to the rails. They've use some sort of thick, (thermosetting?) glue, which may have enough give to accommodate movement, but time will tell.

Shabby chic? POS!

Cheers,

Good Morning Michael

Your table sure was built tough !

There are several formulations of PVA, each with slightly different properties:

• Reasonably fresh PVA (up to 3 - 6 months) then acetic acid (vinegar) or wet PVA may act as a solvent,
• Otherwise isoprophyl alcohol or toluene,
• Never found anything that works with waterproof PVA.

If glue is epoxy, white colour could be a thickener, then:

• heat will melt epoxy but difficult to penetrate into join,
• acetone or MEK are excellent solvents.

If everything else fails, my last resort solvent is xylene. Never tried it on PVA, though.

You indicated that you wanted to shorten the table, but presumably to keep the same width. Is this correct? If so one method to fix the crack in the top is as follows:

Put a layer of plastic and then two layers of cling wrap on top (nothing sticks to cling wrap) and then invert the table top on that.

• Screw a temporary batten parallel to the crack,
• With a strait cutter of spiral cutter route out the crack. Deepen the cut untill only 0.5 mm timber remains,
• glue a pine batten into that router groove,
• Trim and reapply finish.

If you want to make the repair a "design feature" then route from the top table. You could even use a batten of contrasting colour but similar density and hardness (eg Aus cedar or western red cedar or king billy pine).

Hope all goes well




Fair Winds

Graeme