A friend asked me to see if I could repair an old family treasure.
It is a little “curate” table made from a walnut tree that existed on a family farm in Ontario. It is around 60 to 70 years old.
Basic shape is a spindle with three circular shelves. The shelves are fastened to a support arm which was turned to a 0.5″ tenon and inserted into a mortise on the spindle.
Over time the tenons have broken, been repaired by gluing, screwing and even nailing.
I have remooved all of the broken tenons, nails and screws. I propose to make new dowels, bore mortises in the end of the shelf suppport. This will minimize the amount of new wood used.
The obvious material would be walnut, but I want to improve on the mechanical strength if possible, as the design employed is not the best.
Would commercial walnut be stronger than what came off the tree many years ago?
I do have plenty of teak, osage orange, red oak and others tyoes that I could use. I was thinking of osage orange, but it really resists staining.
Thanks
Don
Replies
I'm having a hard time visualizing what you describe, but will the new dowels be visible? If not, I once rescued a set of walnut dining room chairs that had a beautiful, tho' critically flawed design that included a turned section at the base of the chair back that was just too thin to stand up to normal use. I drilled out a 3/8" hole in both ends of the broken sections and epoxied in some steel rod. AFAIK, it's still good after 20 yrs or so.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Everything fits, until you put glue on it.
Mike,
The attachments are visible. The table is a spindle with 3 - 5" dia. X 1" thick disks attached via 1/2" dowel in a spiral pattern.I have thought of embeding 7/16" rod in a walnut dowel.I'll shoot some pictures but that won't be until tomorrow.Don
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