I have an ancient and rather ugly office chair which I love to pieces. Unfortunately, on Thursday morning, the chair attempted to make that literal, as I sat down and heard a nasty splintering sound. Now, I got this thing secondhand, and it’s always had a vertical split up one wooden leg. My brother had run four large carriage bolts through it in an attempt to hold it together, which in hidsight turned out to be a bad idea, as one half of the leg had split in the opposite direction along the line of the first two bolts. ☹️
Removing the bolts, applying a rather considerable amount of wood glue and some dowels, then clamping it, letting it dry, and cleaning up got me to the point shown in the picture (larger version here )
What I need to know is, is there anything I can do to structurally reinforce this thing any further, short of replacing either that leg (beyond my skill level at the moment) or the entire base (a new one would have to be shipped up from the US)? In particular, would “splinting” it with a piece of new wood along the damaged side (or pieces along both sides) help keep it from tearing itself apart? Or should I just redrill the hole for the castor further away from the end, put a couple of C-clamps on, and hope it holds long enough for a new base to arrive?
I want my chair back. 😭
Wood glue and dowels has already helped a lot, but I think using a new piece of wood as a splint would be great (I used that method to fix a very similar situation with our picnic table, and it’s still holding up many years later). Just make sure to attach it with wood screws, and drill pilot holes first, to prevent any further damage.