Cherry Ridge Woodworks

Titebond® Original Glue

I’m in the middle of repairing an antique table. There’s nothing really broken, but most of the joints are loose. So I’m carefully prying apart the old doweled joints and removing the old glue, then reassembling the joint with Titebond wood glue.

As is the case with most old furniture, someone had used copious amounts of glue in an attempt to fix the loose joinery. To remove the glue, I carefully pare the joint down to bare wood with a sharp chisel or block plane. Some would argue that doing so dulls the blade, but nothing a quick touch-up won’t fix.

To repair the dowel joints, I’ll just clean the glue off the dowels as much as possible if they’re still solid. On this particular table, it’s a pedestal style with four legs attached to a center, turned column. The original ½”-dia. dowels had been drilled out and replaced with ⅜”-dia. fluted dowels at some point. They were in poor condition, so I cut them off flush with the joint.

I’m not a fan of dowel joinery, so I set up my router table with a ½”-dia. spiral upcut bit. I routed a long mortise between the two dowel locations on each mating piece. Then I formed loose tenons using ½” Baltic birch plywood and reassembled the joint.

But here’s where you have to pay attention. On this table, the curved legs were each capped with a gothic-style cap piece. But I had failed to follow one of my own rules. I didn’t mark how each piece was oriented. After the glue set up, I noticed one of the pieces was turned 180°. Fortunately, the piece was symmetrical, so visually, it didn’t make a difference. But it could have been a disaster, or at least a big problem.

So the lesson here is this: Whether you’re repairing old furniture or dry-assembling a new project to test for fit, make sure to mark the pieces. Mark the joinery and the orientation of each workpiece.

You’ll be thankful later when the glue and clamps go on.

I just finished putting together an antique cabinet that’s similar to the one you see here. It was literally in pieces when I picked it up from the customer. Apparently, at some point in its life, it had fallen off the wall onto the floor. And by the looks of it, this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Someone somewhere in the past had made a pretty poor attempt at repair using dowels. They had even drilled through the sides of the cabinet in a couple spots to insert the dowels into the shelves!

Miraculously, the heavy, beveled glass door survived and is still a beautiful piece of craftsmanship.

I had been contemplating for a couple of weeks how to go about a decent repair for the cabinet. The dowels and dowel holes had dried glue all over them. And obviously, the wood was old and cracked in some spots. I had to patch a spot that had broken out from the side near a dowel.

So how do I put this back together? I ruled out glue because most of the joinery was butt joints and glue doesn’t hold well on end grain. And the joints weren’t tight enough to be “glue worthy” anyway.

So I resorted to using 1½” finish nails. Yep. Modern nails. I figured with their small heads and a little dab of wood putty, they would all but disappear. So I got out my Warrington-style hammer and tapped in three nails through the sides into each end of the shelves. I countersunk the heads with a nail set and applied a little wood putty with a cotton swab to minimize spreading it around.

Famowood Wood Filler Made from genuine wood flour, these fillers closely emulate the properties of real wood. They can be stained, sawed, drilled, sanded, planed and nailed, just like the real thing. They show no noti.. Famowood Wood Filler

Oh, I have one other confession to make. I used modern screws to hold the top of the cabinet to the sides. They even have a Torx head. But I figured this was where the point of failure was originally when it fell from the wall, and they’re on the back, so it really didn’t matter. If someone throws a fit, they can replace them with traditional, slotted wood screws.

So there you have it. Modern finish nails and screws used in the restoration of an antique cabinet. You can call the antique police now and turn me in.

GRK R4™ Multipurpose Star/Torx Screw
In addition to a Torx-head design that eliminates cam-out slippage, these innovative self-countersinking bits feature six cutting pockets beneath the head and sharp, saw-like lower threads to drive through a variety of materials smoothly, without tearing. Available in several lengths and sizes. Torx/Star-head driver bits also available. GRK R4™ Multipurpose Star/Torx Screw

Those who know me at all know that I’m a big fan of SketchUp. It’s a free, powerful, and easy-to-use software program that lets you design in three dimensions. You can see some of the models I’ve created by clicking here. I’ve also created a most of the SketchUp models you can download as Online Extras for ShopNotes magazine.

There’s a blog (knockoffwood.blogspot.com) I ran across that uses SketchUp to create free plans of “knock-off” furniture. Ana White takes her ideas from Pottery Barn and other catalogs and creates plans so that you can recreate the same style in your garage or basement workshop. And she uses SketchUp to generate the plans. Go take a peek at what she’s done.

And if you find something you like, let me know and I can build it for you! Just use the contact form and we’ll see what we can do.

Of all the hardwoods, I think poplar is the most misunderstood. It has traditionally been used on insignificant internal components of furniture as a secondary wood.

A lot of folks get turned off by the green and brown streaks sometimes evident in the wood. But this can be overcome. Or you can use it to add visual interest to your piece.

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Not too long ago, I had the privilege of attending a day-long seminar with Phil Lowe. I’ve always been impressed with his work.

During the seminar, he showed us his tips and tricks as he created a pie crust table. One of his tips is that he always draws full-size plans before he begins work. He says that doing so gives him a real sense of scale and he can use the drawings to pull dimensions from and use them as templates where necessary.

Phil uses a mix of hand tools and machinery in his woodworking. (more…)