I have a chair that was brought into my shop with a back leg whose rear bottom was broken out from a caster’s stem that had gotten angled backwards. As of now I have repaired this initial problem with a “u” type joint epoxied together such that the long grain surface area is greater than the cross grain joint area. I thought about dowels in the cross grain bonds, but this would be very difficult to accomplish and the results wouldn’t be very precise in my estimation. This is partly due to the curved profile of the rear leg.

As a result of the initial fracture, under stress, the adjacent front leg has a stress fracture in the front that travels up the leg about 60% of the total length of the leg. There is also a deeper crack on the back side of the leg that is about 1/2″ long. These were caused by a worn hole bored out for the caster’s wood stem.

The customer seems to want the chair sitting up on 2 1/2″ high casters as per the original design.

I’m thinking that there are 2 options for me:

First option would be to cut off the chair leg above the long stress fracture and attach a new leg portion, either by doweling the two pieces together, or again forming a “u” type joint and epoxying the joint together. The front leg is merely tapered on 3 sides about 3/4 the way up the leg.

Second option would be to carefully undo the upholstery and try to take apart the leg/frame joint and do a total reconstruction of the leg.This would be a lot of work and of course fairly expensive to the customer.

So… with all the above history my questions are:

What would be your philosophy of repairing the front leg?

Are my options reasonable?

What would be the best way of pulling the front leg/frame joint
apart? If it came to that.

Thank you for your time!

Work Safely

Senor Dorado