Table Fix

Stuart Ablett

Member
Messages
15,917
Location
Tokyo Japan
Well this one will be filed under the heading of "Obligation".

The local neighbourhood association recently bought about a dozen of these tables....

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They use them for meetings and such, they will stack one behind the other with the top tipped up and save space in the room that is used for meetings etc. The old tables had to be folded up and then carried out of the room. Most of the folks who use the tables and the room are older and this table set up and take down for each meeting was something they did not want to do anymore, fair enough.

They bought a dozen or so of these spiffy new tables in May this year, they were EXPENSIVE but they should last for many years. The old tables were rather battered and well used so it was time to replace them I guess.

Well someone did not unlatch the locks on the wheels of one table and with the table top flipped up pushed the table to move it and over it went. It landed on the leg of another table

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See the far corner?

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A close up.

OK now what? No way I can just cut another piece of MDF and get this same veneer, I looked around, but this stuff is a plastic stuff that is about paper thin, and applied at the factory, so matching it is out of the question. Oh did I mention that they also want to spend as little money as possible?

I'm going to try to fix it, but how?

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What I did was carefully pick out the particle board pieces from each side so I had just the edges to deal with.

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Kind of hollowed it out.

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Like this.

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Next I built a corner frame so to speak, I used some of the left over white stock from building those shelves in the L shop, they have a thin removable plastic film on them so they should not stick to the table top I'm fixing.

I then mixed up some epoxy and thinned it with alcohol, which makes the epoxy pour almost like water. As you can imagine the hollowed out particle board soaked up a lot of this epoxy, but in the end I was able to fill the cavity to almost the top. When you thin the epoxy with alcohol it takes a LOT longer to cure.


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As you can see there are some holes in my top, I bought some of these blocks of colored shellac that are used to fix dings in flooring etc, and I'll try my best to match up the colors, that will be next.

Wish me luck.

Cheers!
 
Pity they did not come to you for you to make the EXPENSIVE tables in the first place.

Any thoughts on putting a bracing piece underneath?

Somehow i dont think this is going to be the last of these. Keep the frame setup. Hope fix works well enough to hold someone leaning on that corner.

Was at senior center here a week ago and they still use old large fold up leg tables. Guess one can see from those how spoilt we are for space. Amazing how people where you are have adapted to minimal space.

Oh and good luck if it helps. :)

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
 
well thought out repair stu,, i think you can fake the grain some with that fine line marker and be very close on match..

Exactly Larry, the fine line markers, in brown and dark brown are the straight round things in the last picture.

I'm going to route out two or three grooves in the back side to put in some splines, should make it more than strong enough.

I could not 45 the corners, but they did not want that anyway, they want to keep this one looking as close to the same as the others.

I'm always up for a challenge.... :rolleyes: :D
 
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