Replacing Broken Chair Spindles

Replacing Broken Chair Spindles

Welcome back friends.  Lately I’ve been finishing and refinishing a bunch of furniture pieces that I’ve picked up roadside, dump piles, thrift stores, auctions…basically wherever the road leads me.  Today I have 2 chairs, both from local thrift stores, and both with a broken spindle.

 

First up, I have this vintage, probably reproduction, comb back, Windsor style chair.  A beautiful stand alone chair that was mostly in great shape.

This chair had 2 main issues, the center back spindle was totally broken in half, though still hanging in there, and the lower  break on the left was splintered but had not broken totally thru.

First up, the lower splintered spindle.

Quick and easy fix, just add a few drops of liquid glue and clamp.  This is the Loctite, professional liquid, super glue.  You could use wood glue, but this stuff flows into all the nooks and crannies, dries clear and super fast.

Now for the middle spindle.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to replace one of the bent ones.

I used  a small hand held saw to cut the broken spindle off at  the bottom and the top as flat as possible.

Buy a replacement dowel the same thickness as the fattest part of the spindle you’re replacing.  I say this because my spindle was fatter at the bottom and tapered off slightly at the top.

With a sander, I shaped my dowel to be smaller at the top like the original.

With a drill, the same size as the spindle you’re replacing, drill out the remains of the old spindle about 1/2″ down on the lower part of the chair.  Do the same with the top, but you’re going to have to go up about an inch.  When you put your replacement dowel in you’ll feed it  into the upper  drilled hole about an inch, then slide it back down into the lower 1/2″ hole so that each end of the dowel is held in place about 1/2″ inch into the chair.

Inserted spindle, pushed up then let  down into the lower hole.  Use the same glue as above which just  seeps into the holes.  Let the glue dry which takes only a minute then turn the chair over and do the top hole.

When I drilled my upper hole, the drillbit caught an existing hole and made it larger, thus the wood putty filler above the spindle.  You can see the same type of hole on top of the spindle just to the right.

The only thing left was to stain the dowel (and that hole) to match the original chair and varnish.  I used my usual Danish oil as the varnish.

 

 

So pretty! This was once an $8 chair at my local Goodwill.

My second chair, which also had a broken spindle, was this light colored, solid wood, youth chair.  This is the chair you would use when your child has outgrown their highchair and is ready to  sit at the adult table but they are still a bit too short.  You would use this youth chair instead of a booster.

I got this chair, also at a thrift store for $6 because, it too, had a broken spindle.

While the top of the spindle had just broken off,  with a little twisting and pulling I was able to pull the bottom part of the spindle right out of the hole.

This was where the top of the spindle had broken off.  Once again, drill out this top hole with the same sized drillbit as the dowel you’re replacing about an inch down.

I was going to buy a replacement dowel for the broken spindle, but since this spindle was mostly intact I’m just using what I have.

I will be lifting this dowel to fit into the broken off hole about 1/2″ (marked line)  but this spindle had a weird ledge that had sat on the chair seat.  All that excess had to be sanded off to make one smooth dowel.  A belt sander comes in really handy to make a smooth transition but a hand held sander works almost as well.

The top of the dowel also had to be sanded down , sort of like a  flat pencil point to not only fit into the newly drilled out hole but also to match the tapered ends on the other spindles.  The mark here is about where the taper has to go down to.  Sand well.

 

The newly inserted dowel/spindle is about 1/2″ shorter now, but it works. 😀 .  Drip some of your super glue into the holes and let dry.

Underneath, I cut a small dowel to fill the hole left by the shortened spindle and used wood glue to attach.

The spindle itself, where it was sanded, got 2 coats of a clear wax to match the finish on the original chair.

A tot is all ready to enjoy a meal with the adults and no fiddling with booster seats.

This chair probably doesn’t look any different than the before picture but it no longer has a broken spindle.  A new “Amish style” youth chair on Amazon currently sells for about $150. Not bad for $6, and I didn’t even have to buy a new spindle.

Until next time, stay inspired.