Photo: practicalowl / Flickr

Replacing missing parts on a piece of damaged furniture can bring it new life and also make a seemingly worthless piece more valuable. Beware of replacing missing pieces on genuine old antiques though. It always pays to check with an expert before working on anything that could be a museum piece. As for more common pieces, in this article we discuss how to replace back and side stretchers on old wooden chairs by using wood dowels from a hardware store.

Replacing missing spindles with dowels

Old chairs often have missing parts because they’re heavily used in most households. Seats often need some TLC, as do spindles and stretchers.

Stretchers are easy enough to replace with straight dowels, if they will suit the style of the chair. Buy some dials from the hardware store, once you have measured the diameter of the ones remaining on the chair. Remove the old glue from the old stretcher holes. You can do this by drilling out the old glue using a bit that’s of the same size as the socket.

Cut the dowel to length, allowing for the section that extends into the chair’s legs. Trim the ends of the cut dowel if they’re too big for the socket (using a utility knife) or sandpaper them down to fit. Place wood glue onto the ends of the dowel, squirt some into the socket and set the dowel in place.

How to set the dowel in place

To set the dowel in place, pull the chair’s legs apart so as to insert the cut dowel. You may have to knock the legs apart with a rubber mallet, which will probably loosen the other stretchers. To deal with this situation, remove all the remaining stretchers, remove the old glue from the holes and sand the ends of the stretchers. Re-glue and replace all the stretchers from there.

If a front turned stretcher is missing, a duplicate version will have to be made on a lathe, using the same wood as the original. To insert a stretcher, use the same method discussed above.

Tags: furniture