Wood – How to repair a joint on the legs of the table

tablewoodworking

I need to repair the legs on my dinging room table. The joint is coming loose. I've included pictures, instead of trying to explain the situation.

The first picture is a picture of the leg. The next three are pictures of the joint that I need to repair.

The wood should be flush, right up against the two pieces, but there is a 1/16th inch gap. The gap can be close pretty easily by applying pressure.

I was considering gluing it with carpentry glue. Or even putting some small screws that would attach the leg to the middle piece.

Here are the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/OoVcf#0

Best Answer

I think your plan is doable with a little tweaking. Here's a list of some things to watch out for.

  1. Before assembly you'll need to thoroughly clean the old glue off the surfaces of the joint paying particular attention to the face grain areas (end grain offers little strength to a joint). You don't need to get down to bare wood but all of the crusty bits have to go as they will both impede the joint from coming together and inhibit the new glue's ability to form a bond. Be careful not to round off any corners or your joints will look sloppy.
  2. Your biggest challenge is going to be applying good clamp pressure to such an irregular shape. One trick is to temporarily glue on clamp blocks but as this is a finished piece I wouldn't recommend it because it might damage your finish. Your best bet may be to apply a few small, strategically located dots of an aerosol activated cyanoacrylate glue in addition to your yellow glue. Squeeze the joint together by hand and when you've it the way you want it, hit it with the aerosol and the super glue will hold the joint together while the yellow glue goes off. Maybe have an extra set of hands present to run the spray can, and work quickly because with or without the accelerant the super will go off in only a few minutes.
  3. If you're feeling that the joint needs some mechanical strength, instead of screws use pegs. The screws will most likely fracture the extremely short grain on the edges of the joint, and because the screws can't go all the way through you won't get much strength out of them anyway. Pegs (while offering a pleasantly traditional look) will provide a lot of strength, and offer an alternate fix to the clamping problem in the form of what's called draw boring. It's kind of a lot to go into so I'll just provide this link. Good Luck!
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