Don Weisman writes:

This photo is only to show the orientation of what is being talked about:

The wood on Snake Leg tables is normally oriented to run from

where it joins the center column to the leg tip. Good wood

selection doesn't actually happen in real life unless it is a

Craftsman made Table as it takes a lot of time and wood to

locate the correct grain in a wood inventory. This high quality

table was no exception. It had been repaired twice before the

customer handed it to us. Their repairs failed because they didn't

know what to do and what they did do.was poorly done.

 

The table legs were breaking partially because of improper

gluing of the two dowels in each leg. Also, they were breaking in

the same place each time-at the short grain at the column. You

see, when the leg separated from the lowest to the floor dowel

and away from the column, it was strained and it snapped the leg

at the upper dowel which was still in the dowel hole. There were

other damages also.

THE FIX

 

We inserted (the thin stripes shown in the photo) two (2) cross

grain pieces of wood, and bore oversized holes for the dowels

we epoxied in. Because the shape is difficult to clamp, we hand

held each leg for the epoxy to firm up using Devcons 5 minute

epoxy. Missing splintered off wood was filled with Tootsie.

Because the previous repair people left several broken off

screws deep into the wood which we could not see, we

massacred a very fine quality drill bit which I will charge it's

sharpening to the customer as part of the job.

 

Don Weisman, TX