Ken Johnson

Ok, here's the story. I have a small round table with three legs that my Mother-in-law passed down to my wife. I bumped into it today and one of the legs broke off. I felt really bad until I noticed that two of the legs had been broken and repaired before. The three legs are "dovetailed" into a round center spindle. Actually it is more like a T-slot than a dovetail. The leg that broke off took with it the lips from the T on the spindle. Thete is little room for dowels to help strengthen the glue joint. Any input would be helpful. Also, can anyone tell what kind of wood this is? It kind of looks like mahogany to me. I'm just curious because if I can't fix it I may decide to make a new set of legs since they just screw onto the main center spindle.

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Ken

"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence".
- Samuel Johnson

pianoman

Ken, looking at the pictures, I think I would try to disassemble the table down to the spindle. Remove the bad areas, making a flat space to glue in new wood. This way you can re-turn and re-mill the piece. The same thing can be done with the legs. This is a normal repair practice and also challenging. Another thought, if all the wood is still there...you can remove all old glue with Citric Acid in powder fourm...1 to 1 with water...saturate and brush clean. It might be easier to just build another one...saving the parts that are good. It`s hard to tell from the picture...what kind of wood it is...I`m with you, either Mahogany or Cherry. I hope this helps some...anyway, that`s what I would do. Rick

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Kenbo

It's hard for me to see what is actually going on with this joint (I've been in the shop all day and am a little tired) but I'm wondering if a pocket hole would be able to partially repair the joint. I don't think that it would completely fix it but it may assist in the repair.
Just a thought.
Ken