Sometimes, chair legs, especially those made from oak wood, have the tendency to split. The crack is usually clean and is caused when the “when grain patterns meet at a stress points on the leg, or from abuse”. The split may or may not separate, but whether or not it does, the best idea would be to fix it immediately.
Fixing the crack, by driving a screw or a nail through it to keep it together, will only make the situation worse. That’s why the best idea is to use glue. Here are the steps you can use to fix the cracked oak wood chair leg:
- Turn the chair upside down and try to place a putty knife in the split if you can. If you can’t, try pulling the crack apart a bit and then try to insert the knife. If that still doesn’t work, try inserting the tip of a utility knife (it’s likely to be thinner).
- Put clue into the crack with the tip of a glue bottle and then use another knife to work it into and throughout the crack. Slide the first knife over a bit and put some glue where it was. Take the two knives out when you’re finished.
- At a right angle and using a 5/16-inch drill bit and a drill/driver, drill through the crack and keep going until you are completely through the chair leg. Drill two holes if the crack is more than 6 inches long.
- Put glue into the hole too and using a hammer, pound a 5/16-inch dowel into the hole, until it juts out from both sides.
- Add 2 or more clamps on to the chair’s leg and tighten them until the glue oozes from the crack, then wait overnight for the glue to dry.
- Take off the clamps and use a coping saw to trim the ends of the dowel off. Then, take a file and use it to smooth the dowel’s ends.
- If you need to, you should color the ends of the dowel and color along the crack with a stain marker that matches the color of the chair leg to finish.
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