[Zantosa53]

On a failed craigslist adventure me and my fiancé headed home empty handed stopped by a small hole in the wall thrift shop. Tons of stuffed crammed in every corner, nothing that really fought my eye (except the owner "repairing" a wood table by smearing what looked to be bathroom tile calk into a crack) I noticed two old wood chairs. On a whim I picked them up for 10$ each thinking they'd be fun to fix up.

On the bottom I saw Ethan Allen ht#21 stamped in them. So I googled and figure them to be 40 years old (give or take a decade) and found the same two chairs on ebay cleaned up and looking nicely nice for 424.99 shipping included! So now I want to make sure everything I do to these chairs is exactly right! Currently I'm watching YouTube videos to try and get myself up to speed. Both fortunately and unfortunately, I won't be able to start working on these for a few weeks due to my work schedule. But that gives me plenty of time to read up on doing this properly more. Currently the legs are a bit loose, and I can see a pair of small nails sticking out of the place where the top bar joins the side bars on the back. I was thinking i would pull the legs off, cut out the wedges, glue, put the legs back in, and make new wedges. But I figured I'd both document the process and get some input from you guys, who have been doing this a heck of a lot longer then I have.

 

[Steve Neul]

It appears the chairs have already been stripped at this point. What I would do is disassemble the chairs keeping the parts separate from each other. Then sand all of the parts like they were new and assemble them back with a slow drying two part epoxy. If you get any epoxy on the wood it can be washed off with acetone or lacquer thinner. Then do a final sanding and stain and finish them as if they were new chairs.

When you disassemble if there is a joint which doesn't want to come apart, leave it alone. You can do more damage trying to get a tight joint apart then it's worth.