My parents own an old drop leaf desk that recently moved with them to their new house. Late in the fall the leaf split in two and gently drifted to the waiting grass below to be plucked up with a rake. i.e. it broke in half and landed on someone's foot.
The front of this desk is a panel made up of several smaller boards and between the move to the new house and the age of the piece the glue holding the drop leaf panel together started to fail.
I took the two pieces intending to drop a few biscuits into the panel and glue it back up. No problem! That's too easy for G's Wood Shop though so instead I made a big project out of it and took weeks to return the piece instead of the promised few days! Naturally I photo documented the process so I'd have a good story to tell when returning the panel late.
Here's where I started with two boards nicely cleaved down the middle (I left the bruised foot behind):
I cleaned up the edges with a hand plane so they'll glue back together nicely.
The pencil marks let me see when I've got the entire edge flattened.
Next I clamp the boards flat to the surface of the bench...
...and cut some biscuit slots.
And the desk should be fixed by applying some glue and a few clamps. Here's the dry run of the clamping. Some vertical clamps at the ends with some cauls to make sure the panel stays flat and some horizontal clamps to put pressure on the joint.
With rehearsal over the clamps are placed within reach and glue is applied.
The clamps go back on.
Meh...maybe a few more clamps.
There was quite a lot of glue that squeezed out so I removed that with some knives.
And then I let the panel sit to dry for several days before I could get back to it. In theory the journey should have ended here. But where's the fun in that? Anyone with nine clamps and a biscuit joiner could have gotten this far. Around here we've got to get good and lost when on a journey!
-G!
