Battling an Old Rocking Chair

in #hive-1688692 years ago

I had a tough little project this weekend. I had to repair an old rocking chair so when my wife has the baby she can have a rocking chair to sit in while feeding.

This thing is a bit of an antique and some of the wood peg joints have come loose. Fairly easy to fix but I ran into a bit of a problem along the way.


Both the arms were detatched. This would normally be an easy wood glue fix but the arms are also attached by two crooked wood screws.


Sadly these screws are completely stripped. I first tried the rubber band trick where you put a rubber band over the screw head and jab a screwdriver in there to get a bit of extra torque. Unfortunately this method only works on less extreme examples of a stripped screw head.


I also tried using my metal files to cut a slot for a flathead. Unfortunately this would have taken forever by hand and probably would have burnt out one of my files. So I moved to a different tool.


The next step I tried was a to use a screw extractor. With this method you first drill into the middle of the screw with a metal drill bit. Then you use the other strange spiral extractor to bore into the screw. After that you can use a pair of pliers to slowly twist out the screw.


Unfortunately these screws were probably some kind of heat treated metal that made them too dense to bore into. All I was able to do was create a tiny divet in the center...


The next thing to try is using a dremel with a grinding stone to cut a slot into the screw head and turn it into a flat head screw.


This method actually went pretty fast and sent some sparks flying as I cut the slot into the phillips head.


Finally success!!! The slot method worked perfectly and I was finally able to remove the chair arms so I could glue them down onto the wooden support pegs again.


I wonder what sort of metal these screws are made out of. Seems like a pretty tough alloy of some kind as the metal drill bits barely made a dent in them.


Now for the easy part. Just put some glue into the peg holes in the arm and press them back onto the pegs. Let it sit for about 30 min with weight on the arms.


Now the arms are reseated and are staying put. I used completely new standard wood screws to reattach the arms at the joint. This way I don't have to deal with that heavy duty metal again if the arms ever need to be removed.


Now the antique chair is ready to go. I just had to put some oil in the joints to get it to stop squeaking while rocking. I suspect I'll be donating this thing to a furniture reseller once the baby is crawling and old enough to start putting her head into small spaces. I remember my sister getting her head stuck in a wooden chair when I was young. We had to put butter on her ears to squeeze her head back out from between the wooden pegs lol.

My next weekend experience will probably be continued childproofing of our place before the baby arrives.

Thanks for looking :-)

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You did well, what a great trick to fix a broken bolt.

That metal was super tough, I'm surprised it even was stripped with such hard metal.

Mentally filing this post in the back of the brain for when I might need to get out a screw that is acting up.

That is a real pretty rocking chair, and looks like it doesn’t need much space, what we have here in Finland traditionally are rockings chairs with pretty long legs. Here kids just get their chubby little fingers churshed under those 😅

This one could pose problems for little hands too with all this nooks and crannies and gliding pulleys. I'm thinking about getting one of the simple rounded long leg chairs too.

Congrats on the coming baby. 👦 🧒 Nice work on the rocker.

Yay! 🤗
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You did well to fix it.
Love those old rocking chairs. They are cool 😎😁
Have a great new week @sketch.and.jam 👋🏻😊

My little dremel tool has saved me multiple times on projects. Those furniture screws were super tough.

I had one… a while ago. They are just great. When I have more furniture projects in the future I will get one again. Truly handy tools. 🤓

I got mine to carve beach stones but now its kind of ended up as a tool for all sorts of projects.

That’s cool…. It can do so much.
I wanted to decorate mirrors and glasses. Carving in drawers etc.

Aha etching glass and wood is a perfect task for a dremel. It can be a bit addicting collecting all the different tools for it at the hardware store lol.

Yep… they have so manyyyyy hahahaha !LOL
To bad I lend it out to somebody… and he burned the motor.
I will get a new one as I want to do more furniture restoration and upcycling after our big move. I still have the bits. 😉

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Divorce papers.

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Baby proofing 👍 too bad you couldn't go back with the original parts to keep the antique authentic 🤣 looks like a long battle 👍 We had two kids and somehow ended up with three rocking chairs when it was all over. Still have two of them. They are hard to get rid of after they get lots of memories in them 😉

Oomph yeah this thing was a battle and my wife still complains about the slight creaks it makes. I suppose to get rid of all the noise it makes I would have to completely dismantle it and glue everything solid and hope that when its back together again it won't creak. Fortunately there is a store that will happily take this thing and I'm hoping I can maybe trade it for a simpler design maybe one with just a curve at the bottom rather than all these swinging pulleys. Maybe they won't notice the four unoriginal screws I put into it lol.