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I wound up changing direction on how I accomplished rebuilding the spline joints. Initially, I cut out the damage and spliced in a patch (above), but when I moved to the other side to do the same thing, I realized that I was doing nothing to improve on the weakness in the design that caused the joints to blow out. So, my first splice was reshaped, and both sides received a single piece that provided a solid replacement for the tongue or tenon of the joint. I had a decision to make here, and wound up knowingly choosing to install these pieces cross-grain to the body of the section, as in line just wouldn’t provide nearly as much strength. West System epoxy may or may not be the best choice, but for these splices it just seemed more attractive than hide glue.
Cleaning up the wing that was still attached was a little bit complicated. Having a four foot long plank attached to the leg made it a bit awkward setting, but it proved to help stabilize the workpiece, so the work went more quickly.
It was now time to clean up the joints in the outer legs, accomplished with chisels of several types, and to finish shaping the new splines/tenons to match (see photo below). I had consulted with a couple of people on the veneer needed, as I had never seen anything like what came off the wings in my limited veneering experience. The local suppliers didn’t recognize the cross-laid poplar and mahogany for what it was, but past experience of excellent support from Certainly Wood proved to once again be the place for the answer. They had multiple versions of the poplar “cross-banding” veneer, and I choose the 0.030” version as I thought it would be a bit easier to handle. The original veneer looked to be about 0.025”, so this wasn’t far off in size. Poplar splits easily enough when working it in board form, and that proved to be a more serious problem in veneer form. Half of the material split lengthwise just in taking it out of the shipping carton, so it was a great idea to order twice what I knew I needed from the start. The price was low enough to make it a no-brainer. At this point, my glue pot had died a painful death – torn apart by me failing to clean it out after its last use. Graphic proof that hide glue has great bonding strength, as the glue ripped the ceramic surface apart as it shrank during curing.
The new ‘glue pot’ (a chocolate melter, shown at left, above) works better anyway.
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