Need a little advice on a table....

Paul Downes

Member
Messages
959
Location
Westphalia, Michigan
I have an old oak dinning room table. The center section is about 4 ft. square and it has 4 1ft. leafs. Since my kids leaned a mattress on it and managed to break some of the leg supports and because the top really needed re-finishing I took it out to my shop and stripped it down. I have figured out that this is not a good winter time project because after removing the finish the top lost moisture and the boards shrunk and I now have a split in the center section. It split on the glue line. the split runs about 2 ft. into one side and 1 ft. into the opposite side.
I tried to clean out the old glue and re-glue it but as soon as I released the clamps it re-split.

I am thinking about sawing the top in half at the split and re-jointing the two pieces and then re-gluing them. I will check to see if the lose of wood at the glue joint will affect the way the table fits with the leaves but I figured to ask around to see if i am forgetting something else.

Does this sound like a reasonable repair? I was really sick to see the top split. Beforehand you could not find the glue joints in the top. Whoever built it originally did a masterful joinery job.

The split is about 1/8th open at one side and 1/16th on the opposite.
 
Just a thought- if your shop is dry (humidity-wise), it might be worthwhile bringing the table back into the house (or raise the rh some other way) and see if the gap closes by itself. If it does, it might be worth trying to reglue again. But, cleaning out the old glue may be the bigger problem that is preventing a successful glue up.
 
i agree with yu charlie on the cleaning out the old glue,, i think if yu could get it clean it would work but the saw would be the best route to do both i think ..
 
Well, I checked the top for square and it isn't even close. So I can't just run it against the fence to saw the crack out. I might use a straight edge and a jig saw to get it in half. This would be a minimal kerf. I might have to use a router with a straight edge to mill the edge to clean it up before taking a real light pass on the jointer.
 
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