I've found a chair in my local 2nd hand. The underside has a label. I looked it up and it's a Dutch brand called AwA (I've never heard of them). From what I found online, it looks like the chair is designed by Louis van Teeffelen and is called "Koehoorn stoel" circa 1950.
I see some joining issues and I'm wondering what I'd need to do to get it back in place? And otherwise, what do you think of the chair? Is it an interesting find?
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Afrormosia. To fix that you will need to open the joint up completely. Probably you can do that by hand, if not a bit of assistance from steam will do the trick. The clean all the old glue out of the joint. Steam will be very helpful there. Then check for a nice tight fit, re-glue, and clamp the joint very tightly.
Depending on what finish is on the chair, the steam might lit it off. If that happens you would need to remove the old finish and re-finish the chair.
I've done a fair bit on the chair. I sanded off the lacquer and with some patience I've managed to get the joins separated by steaming them with a clothing iron in rotation with a heat gun. I noticed that the wood has some stress fractures in this area (they were there before I started!) - How should I repair these?
I see in a couple of other joins what seems to be shoddy glue work. I'd like to avoid repeating the process to get them apart if I can. Is there a trick to getting the visible bits off? Perhaps a certain type of sandpaper? (being hopeful here)
I was considering using teak oil on this chair instead of lacquer because the wood is gorgeous when I wipe it with a wet cloth. Is that advisable since this is afrormosia?
I think what I have learned in this job so far is that buying an already broken and structurally unsound chair is a lot of extra work and while I am really enjoying learning about doing these repairs I'm not sure it's worth it in terms of resale. I'm already considering keeping it for myself since the damages to the joins will always be visible.
It is actually possible to repair these problems very well. It is also a lot of work.
Stress fractures: I would break open the stress fractures, so that you can re-glue the wood along the grain split, which makes for an extremely sound joint (and invisible when done right). The dowels are going to be in the way of breaking the stress fractured bits off.
So first you will want to cut the dowels off, then drill the centers with a drill bit that is 2/3 to 3/4 as wide as the dowel. Then you break the dowel in to the hole with something like a small screwdriver, or an awl. This allows you to get back to the original hole.
Then you can break off the stress fractured parts. And re-gule them, with heavy clamping.
Then you can clean the remnants of the glue out of the dowel holes with a drill bit of the exact size of the hole.
Then you can insert new dowels, re-glue the frame of the chair. (and
To remove glue slop in the corners, a sharp chisel can work. You can usually push it under the glue and then pop it off. You have to be careful not to gouge the wood.
Oh, and teak oil looks great on Afrormosia. The Danes (and Norwegians and Swedes) used Afrormosia on it own or mixed with teak in lots of piece, and most of them were oiled. The Afrormosia is dark because of UV light (imagine a sun tan). So after you sand it, it can end up a bit splotchy. I find that a dark tinted Danish oil (I can get a 'dark walnut' tinted danish oil in my hardware store) as a first coat evens out the color. And then use Teak oil.
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