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A few weeks ago, my spouse purchased two Faux bamboo Chippendale mahogany chairs for our dining table. The chairs were a reproduction of a Victorian furniture style and meant to match the [...]

A long-time carpenter shares a repair trick to hide the mistakes made by ham-handed apprentices. For more than 30 years I was a traveling carpenter foreman in charge of installation of [...]

In my furniture repair shop, I repair a lot of chairs.  I’ve seen many DIY mistakes over the years that didn’t need to happen.  Repairing a chair with loose joints is a relatively [...]

Work miracles on wood with oxalic acid. Watering a potted plant can be disastrous if the plant lives on top of something made out of wood. We’ve all seen the white spots and black rings that can [...]

Bob Flexner walks you through all the steps in repairing an antique factory-made chair that is glued with animal hide glue.

Veneer is just thin wood – so don’t be afraid of it. I love repairing old furniture – the older the better. I find repairing more challenging and satisfying than making new because someone else, [...]

Cracking, crazing and physical wear have specific causes and remedies. Everyone who buys, sells, works on or collects old furniture, or who has some in their house, has to be concerned with [...]

Bob Flexner (assisted by his grandson) repair an upholstered chair the quick and dirty way.

With time, furniture joints (especially in chairs) tend to loosen up a bit. It’s part of working with a material that once was alive and continues to react with the environment. Wood [...]

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had good woodworking skills 40 years ago when I started doing furniture restoration, including furniture repair. But repairing furniture is different than [...]

In a lot of woodshops, the easiest way to fix a mistake is to simply start over. Didn’t account for the tenon in your drawings and cut the stretcher too short? Cut a new board and start [...]