teaching how to fix things can be almost as important, if not as important in fact, as teaching how to build stuff from 0. At least in my experience of being the repairman of the family
Honestly, I’m here for it Mark. I really enjoy seeing you do more of the furniture repair and refinishing videos here and there. The Heywood Wakefield dresser, now this. Very useful information.
I for one am glad you decided to show this. Makes it easier for those that run into this problem and don't have a clue as to how to get started on at least attempting to fix such damage.
I must say, this is as educational as any of your videos. Learning how to fix something is just as important as learning how to build something. Both require separate skills and a different methodology.
Oh thank you! I was almost yelling at the screen...clean up the casters and make them roll smooth! Turned out to be a very fortuitous fishing expedition by the lady: You helped someone in need and we got a concise and informative repair tutorial.
You are your own worst critic when it comes to things you do! I have been watching you gor a couple of years and what you consider a "Temporary " repair with outlet the owners! Great job and I love your content. I was more a metal guy when I could work than wood so I really appreciate your skills and techniques!
Good karma for you for helping someone in need. I also appreciate seeing how you approach such a repair; it's certainly a type of repair we all face and I'm glad to have a better sense of how to approach it.
I appreciate the make it functional approach! I’m a novice woodworker and I get family/friends asking me to fix/make stuff from time to time. Communication about their expectations is so important. The fact that you went the extra mile to grease the casters is such a nice touch.
Looks like the dowel worked, the customer just kept hammering on it till it failed in a different mode. Getting castors that aren't so far offset away from the central axis of the chair legs would help put less stress on the ends.
Love the video, especially the bit about setting expectations at the beginning. Sometimes folks don't know how good it can be or how much time it can cost and sometimes "good enough" is good enough. And thanks for the awesome shout out! If you're local, it's pronounced "naw-fuk" though. 😅
This was a great educational video for fixing a chair. I get family/friends calling me up all the time to fix things. Legs are tricky because they're taking a lot of stress and force, so making sure you perform the right fix is important. Judging by how it split, it looks like it got dragged on the carpet one too many times and just went. Better castors would be an improvement longterm.
Had a couple bring a fairly ornate fireplace mantle to me that they had cut....hacked apart to make a shelf and now wanted it to be a fireplace mantle again so i had to put it back together. Because i'm stupid, i said i could do it lol. I did do it and there was a nasty seam where they went together. Nice and straight but not great looking. My wife took over, filling those gaps first with coarse sawdust and and glue, progressively moving to finer filler paste. She is an artist so colour matching and replicating the colour of that fill to match was fairly simple for her. I learned a lot, mainly that I don't dig doing repairs lol. Great video Mark. Merry Christmas
I have 6 of those chairs. They are old restaurant chairs from the ~1950's. They're super sturdy and normally take a beating. The casters on mine broke years ago and were never replaced which is why they probably lasted so long
OMG Marc, we have an almost identical cat! Ours is Socks. Our timber farm was adopted by a litter of feral kittens. We have domesticated them. The only one that feel comfortable making the trek up to my shop (semi converted barn, WIP) is Socks. But if I use any power equipment, he bolts. Almost 30% of my shop time, if not more, is used for furniture repair & restoration. I like the challenge but wouldn't want to do it professionally
You need to get some cards from local furniture repair and handyman companies to hand out when someone just drops by. I've had to do that with several friends in the past. - Chris
I can relate. Retired American military living in Turkey. I have a small private woodshop, hobby only. A guy brought me a stool to repair. His parents told him about me (gossip network, foreigner). I agreed on one condition: tell your parents to be quiet because I'm not a business and I don't want the authorities to think I am. Had to replace the entire seat, he brought me a box of Turkish Delight as a gift.
Great video. Finding someone who can do furniture repairs is a issue at least where I live. As I don't have the space or tools to so anything like that. Unfortunately there aren't many people who offer furniture repairs. At least where I live.
Nice work..........as usual. I was sure you were going to wrap the rear legs in some sort of metal strap similar to the front legs to keep it all together. i hope she appreciated your time and effort and doesn't spread the news to her whole family.😉😁 JimE
I recently did a similar ish repair and cut a small slot around the leg, and wrapped it in carbon/epoxy for a made-in-place ferrule. You could do the same thing with a more traditional look with twine and epoxy and no slot. I appreciate thats more work than this but it might only be an extra 10 minutes on this repair as you're epoxying already. I've seen such repairs on boat stuff occasionally
Deluded paint? Deluded lacquer? 😂😂 It firmly believed it was right, but was absolutely wrong! 😂😂 Seriously, though, this was a very nice mitzvah to have done for them.
Check the shop lighting. I have a Benjamin Moore store around the corner and EVERY thing in there is too green. I take samples and color chips outside to use daylight to match. This applies to the box stores too. Non-full spectrum bulbs, fluorescent, etc...
Glad to hear you are with me, good or bad. If I don’t know, I will just say idk. No money if they are okay with that payment. I prob can get it but not sure.
By the very design of those casters, they are applying torque in the direction of force applied (unless someone drops straight down). If someone was able to manufacture sleeves for the rear legs, it would put the force onto the sleeve.. maybe a piece of square stock with edges dressed about 1.5” high, then painted
21 minute video of a glue up. Wood glue would have set quicker than the video. But all kidding aside, I did get into a bind like you. My sister would salvage furniture from trash and hand to me to repair. She showed everyone the transformation and before you know it, everyone was giving me trash. I finally had to say this isn’t my trade. I’d only work on it if/when I had time and to my specs. Needless to say, trash is still coming in (including particle board Ikea crap) and I keep taking only the good wood. Sometimes a new build is quicker and easier than a complete overhaul. Guess I’m like a Vegas escort, just can’t say NO! 🤷🏻♂️ -Peter
I like this video as a change of pace. I do have 2 comments about the methodology. Firstly, other than the curing time, the glue up takes about 10-15 minutes and is the least amount of effort and the attempt wouldn't affect later options if they are needed (replacement pieces, scarf joints, etc) so the glue idea was super smart to begin with, in my opinion. My second comment is about what you did right after, for me at least, it seems that you would normally want to "test" or "check" the functionality of the fix before you immediately started to clean and refinish. Had you put the sleeve and the caster in and it started to crack then all the finish work was a huge waste of time. So not necessarily a critique but maybe a suggestion for something that you HOPEFULLY won't be doing again ;)
haha good point. If the leg cracked, that would have been a lot of wasted effort. I think I just had enough faith from the way the joint went back together, the condition of the broken pieces, and the kind of squeezout I saw, that the leg was going to hold. Thankfully it worked out.
The glue might hold better with clean flattened wood but that actually creates more problems than it solves for something like this. Removing material changes the dimension of the pieces and makes the gaps between them larger, making the repair even more obvious. So unless you're planning on a full sand-down and refinish, it's best to leave them intact, let the glue do it's work while also making the repair as naturally disguised as possible.
I wonder if this problem could be avoided if the future repair involved put a block of wood so the casters poles crossed the grain instead of going with the fibers.
Hey, it sounds like you might have missed some of the recent content! This year, I've posted over 20 videos focused on projects, including a detailed 11-part series on building a sideboard. If you're looking for something else, maybe my channel isn't the best fit for what you're after, but I appreciate your feedback! :)
I would have been real tempted to just sand that leg back to a seam somewhere and re-stain the whole thing at once. It’s more work, but it’s less fiddly work and would probably be “faster” in the long run.
"I'm not going to color-match..." ... Proceeds to color match. "I'm not charging for this..." Baller move, Marc, and the caster maintenance. Never knew you did refurb/repair. Overall, this is what being neighborly means.
YOu talk about not doing repairs, as you are into education videos, etc. This is an education video, on a repair, covering the grain, the breaks you see, an old repair, etc. And these are the things we see. We get requests from relatives, friends, etc ask us to do.
The basic design of the chair makes those back legs weak points - getting in/out of the chair results in front-to-back stress on the wood that coincides with the grain in the wood, and the holes for the caster inserts further weakens the bottoms of the legs. There clearly should have been metal fittings around the back legs - just as was done on the front legs. I might have considered trying to fabricate some metal bands for the back legs (brass, perhaps) although that would have been a lot more work.
I'm thinking a small roundover and wire wrap would do much the same job at a fraction of the effort. The aesthetics'd be questionable, but it's on the floor next to a caster.
Good sponsor, been there (down the street). Should have oiled the wheels and swivels. I don't understand why the epoxy vice wood glue, since it was tight fitting pieces. Very ok overall, worse case you have to refund (tongue in cheek... I understand it was gratuita).
Nope. On the arm of a chair, sure. On the leg...nope. Gotta replace the whole leg, or at least re-tip the leg above the break. Epoxy is brittle, wood is flexible.
I didn't realize that you sir (whisperer) were a veterinarian. Besides that, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your feline ... Must be the camera angle. Perhaps after i watch the video the issue may come to light then. But if u hurt that little poo-c-cat. Be careful of the net wide karen institute... Those menical heathens are everywhere! 🙃
Well, I can tell you’ve never lived anywhere near Norfolk. 😅 You pronounce it like it logically should be pronounced, “Nor-folk”. Locals say “NOR-f*ck”.
Stuff I Used:
+West System Epoxy With Pumps Kit - amzn.to/3VxtqrJ
+High Density 404 Filler - amzn.to/3ZSEVgi
+Total Boat Epoxy Kit w/ Pumps - amzn.to/4ivMocd
I like the idea of having the occasional fixing something, I think it adds to the educational stuff.
teaching how to fix things can be almost as important, if not as important in fact, as teaching how to build stuff from 0. At least in my experience of being the repairman of the family
Honestly, I’m here for it Mark. I really enjoy seeing you do more of the furniture repair and refinishing videos here and there. The Heywood Wakefield dresser, now this. Very useful information.
What a nice thing to do for a stranger in the holday season Marc! Kudos!
Great job Marc. I’m she and her husband really appreciated the repair!
I for one am glad you decided to show this. Makes it easier for those that run into this problem and don't have a clue as to how to get started on at least attempting to fix such damage.
I must say, this is as educational as any of your videos. Learning how to fix something is just as important as learning how to build something. Both require separate skills and a different methodology.
For me, so glad to learn that my old discolored West System hardener is still functional, ... Thanks!
That was very nice of you to fix the lady's husband's chair and share how you did it with everyone. Thank you
Thanks for being kind to your neighbor (one in need).
Thank you, Marc. Very informative. Really like your presentation style.
Love this. It feels like I’m watching Bob Ross! Very relaxing.
Oh thank you! I was almost yelling at the screen...clean up the casters and make them roll smooth!
Turned out to be a very fortuitous fishing expedition by the lady: You helped someone in need and we got a concise and informative repair tutorial.
Thank-you, Oreo, for the thumbnail. 🐈⬛
Fantastic work, Marc! It turned out great! 😃
Thanks a bunch for all the tips!
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
You're a good man, Charlie Brown. :)
You are your own worst critic when it comes to things you do! I have been watching you gor a couple of years and what you consider a "Temporary " repair with outlet the owners! Great job and I love your content. I was more a metal guy when I could work than wood so I really appreciate your skills and techniques!
I really like repair vide0s, wouldn't mind more of them ;) btw good idea with the grease for the casters!
Nice repair Marc. You are one of the last nice guys.🙂🙂
That is a beautiful old chair. I am kind of jealous
Great stuff. This is the type of project we run into everyday. Great to see real life solutions !
Thanks for the encouragement! Glad this was helpful.
Good karma for you for helping someone in need. I also appreciate seeing how you approach such a repair; it's certainly a type of repair we all face and I'm glad to have a better sense of how to approach it.
I appreciate the make it functional approach! I’m a novice woodworker and I get family/friends asking me to fix/make stuff from time to time. Communication about their expectations is so important. The fact that you went the extra mile to grease the casters is such a nice touch.
I sometimes appreciate this kind of wood work as apposed to full builds.
It seems to be my most recent requests.
Well done! For the price you charged that was an amazing repair. I hope she appreciated it.
Awesome. Loved this video. I like your more produced videos but this was a nice change of pace that felt more casual and that was great too!
Looks like the dowel worked, the customer just kept hammering on it till it failed in a different mode.
Getting castors that aren't so far offset away from the central axis of the chair legs would help put less stress on the ends.
Sweet guy. That was very kind of you to help out a member of your 'hood or community.
Love the video, especially the bit about setting expectations at the beginning. Sometimes folks don't know how good it can be or how much time it can cost and sometimes "good enough" is good enough. And thanks for the awesome shout out! If you're local, it's pronounced "naw-fuk" though. 😅
Nicly done my good man!
Appreciate you sharing.
This was a great educational video for fixing a chair. I get family/friends calling me up all the time to fix things. Legs are tricky because they're taking a lot of stress and force, so making sure you perform the right fix is important. Judging by how it split, it looks like it got dragged on the carpet one too many times and just went. Better castors would be an improvement longterm.
Had a couple bring a fairly ornate fireplace mantle to me that they had cut....hacked apart to make a shelf and now wanted it to be a fireplace mantle again so i had to put it back together. Because i'm stupid, i said i could do it lol. I did do it and there was a nasty seam where they went together. Nice and straight but not great looking. My wife took over, filling those gaps first with coarse sawdust and and glue, progressively moving to finer filler paste. She is an artist so colour matching and replicating the colour of that fill to match was fairly simple for her. I learned a lot, mainly that I don't dig doing repairs lol. Great video Mark. Merry Christmas
Nice Christmas spirit…..🎄You’re the best.
Excellent video. Really useful information, keep up the good work.
I have 6 of those chairs. They are old restaurant chairs from the ~1950's. They're super sturdy and normally take a beating. The casters on mine broke years ago and were never replaced which is why they probably lasted so long
Fun little video. Nice repair
Who's a good boy!?! Seriously, a nice thing to do.
OMG Marc, we have an almost identical cat! Ours is Socks. Our timber farm was adopted by a litter of feral kittens. We have domesticated them. The only one that feel comfortable making the trek up to my shop (semi converted barn, WIP) is Socks. But if I use any power equipment, he bolts.
Almost 30% of my shop time, if not more, is used for furniture repair & restoration. I like the challenge but wouldn't want to do it professionally
You need to get some cards from local furniture repair and handyman companies to hand out when someone just drops by. I've had to do that with several friends in the past. - Chris
Note to self. Marc has trouble saying, "No" to white pants.
Now I know how to get a used bandsaw.
nah, i wan't that planer.
This was a great video, thanks marc
I enjoyed this video. Wouldn't mind seeing more repair videos. Especially if you could show how to repair damaged finish on a dining room table.
Good dude move. Enjoyed it.
Definitely akin to the Christmas Spirit!!!!!
Love it!
Good job 🎉❤❤
I can relate. Retired American military living in Turkey. I have a small private woodshop, hobby only. A guy brought me a stool to repair. His parents told him about me (gossip network, foreigner). I agreed on one condition: tell your parents to be quiet because I'm not a business and I don't want the authorities to think I am. Had to replace the entire seat, he brought me a box of Turkish Delight as a gift.
Great video. Finding someone who can do furniture repairs is a issue at least where I live. As I don't have the space or tools to so anything like that. Unfortunately there aren't many people who offer furniture repairs. At least where I live.
Nice work..........as usual. I was sure you were going to wrap the rear legs in some sort of metal strap similar to the front legs to keep it all together.
i hope she appreciated your time and effort and doesn't spread the news to her whole family.😉😁 JimE
Thanks for a great video.
How timely. I was just asked to do something similar. Hope my repair goes as smoothly as yours.
Marc the good guy.
Great job. How kind. I would have done the same thing.
i haven't done enough repair work to have burned out on it yet. i still enjoy the mental challenge of it.
Ive found that 3M Super 33 black electrical tape works fantastic for this type of repair as it does shrink and gets very tight.
I recently did a similar ish repair and cut a small slot around the leg, and wrapped it in carbon/epoxy for a made-in-place ferrule. You could do the same thing with a more traditional look with twine and epoxy and no slot. I appreciate thats more work than this but it might only be an extra 10 minutes on this repair as you're epoxying already. I've seen such repairs on boat stuff occasionally
Mohawk Blendal Sticks and matte clear to lock them in.
Deluded paint? Deluded lacquer? 😂😂 It firmly believed it was right, but was absolutely wrong! 😂😂
Seriously, though, this was a very nice mitzvah to have done for them.
Check the shop lighting. I have a Benjamin Moore store around the corner and EVERY thing in there is too green. I take samples and color chips outside to use daylight to match. This applies to the box stores too. Non-full spectrum bulbs, fluorescent, etc...
thanks
Just wondering if you thought about making copper sleeves for the back legs like what's on the front legs?
What a nice thing to do
Glad to hear you are with me, good or bad. If I don’t know, I will just say idk. No money if they are okay with that payment. I prob can get it but not sure.
By the very design of those casters, they are applying torque in the direction of force applied (unless someone drops straight down). If someone was able to manufacture sleeves for the rear legs, it would put the force onto the sleeve.. maybe a piece of square stock with edges dressed about 1.5” high, then painted
@19:48 LOL. You got me!!!
21 minute video of a glue up. Wood glue would have set quicker than the video. But all kidding aside, I did get into a bind like you. My sister would salvage furniture from trash and hand to me to repair. She showed everyone the transformation and before you know it, everyone was giving me trash. I finally had to say this isn’t my trade. I’d only work on it if/when I had time and to my specs. Needless to say, trash is still coming in (including particle board Ikea crap) and I keep taking only the good wood. Sometimes a new build is quicker and easier than a complete overhaul. Guess I’m like a Vegas escort, just can’t say NO! 🤷🏻♂️ -Peter
I had a couple of those chairs and they were made out of maple.
Hmmm.... toner maybe would help?
I like this video as a change of pace. I do have 2 comments about the methodology. Firstly, other than the curing time, the glue up takes about 10-15 minutes and is the least amount of effort and the attempt wouldn't affect later options if they are needed (replacement pieces, scarf joints, etc) so the glue idea was super smart to begin with, in my opinion. My second comment is about what you did right after, for me at least, it seems that you would normally want to "test" or "check" the functionality of the fix before you immediately started to clean and refinish. Had you put the sleeve and the caster in and it started to crack then all the finish work was a huge waste of time. So not necessarily a critique but maybe a suggestion for something that you HOPEFULLY won't be doing again ;)
haha good point. If the leg cracked, that would have been a lot of wasted effort. I think I just had enough faith from the way the joint went back together, the condition of the broken pieces, and the kind of squeezout I saw, that the leg was going to hold. Thankfully it worked out.
I have read that it's better to shave breaks like that smooth as the glue doesn't hold the broken texture as well. Thoughts?
The glue might hold better with clean flattened wood but that actually creates more problems than it solves for something like this. Removing material changes the dimension of the pieces and makes the gaps between them larger, making the repair even more obvious. So unless you're planning on a full sand-down and refinish, it's best to leave them intact, let the glue do it's work while also making the repair as naturally disguised as possible.
Was hoping to see the big reveal when the lady picked up the chair.
Yeah that would make for a better ending, but I have a problem sticking a camera in someone's face who didn't ask for it. I'm a terrible UA-camr. lol
You're thinking of The Repair Shop show. 😂
@@woodwhisperer 😂
what tape is that
👍👍👍👍
I wonder if this problem could be avoided if the future repair involved put a block of wood so the casters poles crossed the grain instead of going with the fibers.
You could have made metal caps like on the front and it would be good for the life of the user and then some.
Never use grease on unsealed bearings. Use a spray lubricant on it. Grease holds dirt and will cause the bearings to burn out prematurely.
I am upset there were no Bob Ross quotes while you were painting ;p
Can’t remember the last time I actually saw you working on this chanel. Really miss you creating something in your workshop.
Hey, it sounds like you might have missed some of the recent content! This year, I've posted over 20 videos focused on projects, including a detailed 11-part series on building a sideboard. If you're looking for something else, maybe my channel isn't the best fit for what you're after, but I appreciate your feedback! :)
I would have been real tempted to just sand that leg back to a seam somewhere and re-stain the whole thing at once.
It’s more work, but it’s less fiddly work and would probably be “faster” in the long run.
If I don’t watch woodworking videos I watch furniture repair videos. Don’t mind if you do them as well.
❤
Anyone else see Jabba the Hutt’s face in that dowel? 2:06
That dowel in the leg looks very unhappy 😂
"I'm not going to color-match..." ... Proceeds to color match.
"I'm not charging for this..."
Baller move, Marc, and the caster maintenance. Never knew you did refurb/repair.
Overall, this is what being neighborly means.
👍
YOu talk about not doing repairs, as you are into education videos, etc. This is an education video, on a repair, covering the grain, the breaks you see, an old repair, etc. And these are the things we see. We get requests from relatives, friends, etc ask us to do.
Can you replicate this chair for the guild?
The basic design of the chair makes those back legs weak points - getting in/out of the chair results in front-to-back stress on the wood that coincides with the grain in the wood, and the holes for the caster inserts further weakens the bottoms of the legs. There clearly should have been metal fittings around the back legs - just as was done on the front legs. I might have considered trying to fabricate some metal bands for the back legs (brass, perhaps) although that would have been a lot more work.
I'm thinking a small roundover and wire wrap would do much the same job at a fraction of the effort. The aesthetics'd be questionable, but it's on the floor next to a caster.
Good sponsor, been there (down the street).
Should have oiled the wheels and swivels. I don't understand why the epoxy vice wood glue, since it was tight fitting pieces. Very ok overall, worse case you have to refund (tongue in cheek... I understand it was gratuita).
Sooooo, did you go all Norm Abram and measure it out, take plenty of pictures so you can have a plenty for you and family?
🎄☃🎄⛄🎄
So you're saying if I show up with broken chairs you'll just fix it for free? 😉
Depends on the pants you're wearing.
Nope. On the arm of a chair, sure. On the leg...nope. Gotta replace the whole leg, or at least re-tip the leg above the break. Epoxy is brittle, wood is flexible.
Sorry for being a distraction. Next video I’ll shut my yap.
I didn't realize that you sir (whisperer) were a veterinarian. Besides that, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your feline ... Must be the camera angle. Perhaps after i watch the video the issue may come to light then. But if u hurt that little poo-c-cat. Be careful of the net wide karen institute... Those menical heathens are everywhere! 🙃
Well, I can tell you’ve never lived anywhere near Norfolk. 😅
You pronounce it like it logically should be pronounced, “Nor-folk”.
Locals say “NOR-f*ck”.
Thank you Romans 10:9-13❤