Wood 1007 Methods of Fastening: Day One

Today we begin another new section; Methods of Fastening. In this section we look at and learn about the many ways that furniture is fastened, as well as how to repair the best, and the worst of joints. We will be re-gluing chairs and tables, and making any replacement parts we might need along the way using the skills we acquired in our woodworking section.


We started the day with some conversation on why glue joints fail. There are many reasons that glue joints can fail and it only takes one misstep to make even the nicest looking joint come loose. However, we often find that there is at least one, if not many things wrong with some joints, and we need to learn how to respond to these situations. Our 1st step is learning about how our furniture is constructed.


The students brought in many of their own projects, but we also have some pieces that need attention here in our workshop. We need to know how furniture is put together in order to know how it is taken apart, so we need to look at each chair individually to check for nails, screws and other fasteners, we look at where the joints are and number them so we can put the chair back the way it was. Then we get down to the nitty gritty and actually begin dis-assembling the furniture, and clean the joints, make any necessary repairs in preparation to re-glue each chair.

Wood 1004 Wood Working: Veneer Patching

As we wind down the woodworking section, we have looked at power tools and hand tools, we have learned how to square a board, we have done riping and cross-cutting on the table saw, made tenons on the router table, used the scroll saw to duplicate a back splat for a chair, we've hand cut tenons, made usable cutting boards and now we are looking at veneer patching.

There are a number of ways to patch veneer, in Spot Repair I, we learned how to do burn-in's, in Spot Repair II we learned that we could do a polyester fill, now we look at replacing wood with wood. This gives us our grain and texture back, if the piece should ever be stripped, there will be wood there, and it gives us another tool we can use to solve problems. Even within the veneer patch, there are a few different techniques, you could cut a uniform shape into the veneer and replace the missing piece with a new piece of veneer, scarfing the joint to feather in the new wood. If you have the piece of veneer that came off you can re-glue it. You can also cut your new veneer with a jewelers saw and fit it into the existing gap, while not loosing any original wood or finish. Once you have put all the new pieces in, it is a matter of an accurate color match and top coat and you can have a very nice repair on any veneered surface.

Wood 1004 Woodworking: Begining a New Chapter Again

We are 3 days into our next section of our program, we set color aside for a bit and turn our focus to woodworking. Our students come to us with a variety of backgrounds, some have never worked with wood, some have hand tool experience and no power tool experience, or vise-versa, and some have been woodworkers, professional or hobbyists for many years. With this mixed bag, it is important to cover all the basis, and look at safe practices and proper technique.

In the wood working section we learn techniques required to make wooden components for repairing wooden objects. We learn how to square a board, make, and repair a number of different common joints used in woodworking, and the proper technique for sharpening hand tools and the safe practices of using any of our tools.

Although wood working is not the primary focus of our training at NIWF, it is a useful skill to be able to make replacement parts for wooden furniture, millwork, or any other wooden objects.

Wood 1004 Wood Working: Being Creative

Sometimes when we are making components for our furniture, we need to be creative. Here we needed a bead for a chair, instead of using the lathe for this small piece, we decided to do the work on the drill press.
Getting the detail of the bead was crucial to achieve the right look, we were at a loss for the exact right tool, so we made our own from a piece of tool steel. The drill press spun the bead, it was anchored below by a dowel, then the scraper was fed into the piece, while being stabilized by the block of wood behind it.
It is just this kind on craftsmanship that is needed when taking on antiques, as each piece was usually hand made and unique.