This past week I was able to repair a broken dining table for a client. The clients moved from Australia and the dining table, along with some chairs were severely damaged during shipment. Unfortunately, the chairs were beyond repair, but the dining table broke right at the leg joint leaving enough wood left to fix it. This was a tricky challenge as the base of the table is made from Australian Blackbutt which we can’t get here in the US, so I had to be sure not to make any mistakes.
The original leg joint was a mortises and tenon which is usually a really strong joint. However, the design of this table put the joint right at the end of the stretcher and oriented along the flat of the board. This only left about 1/4″ of material on the outside of the joint making it very weak.
To strengthen the joint, I chose to repair it with a miter reinforced with floating tenons and splines. To cut the miters, I used both the miter saw and my circular saw beveled to 45 degrees. I took my time to be sure these cuts were crisp and clean as a smooth surface is what makes a miter joint strong. Then, I added floating tenons with the festool domino and glued up the joint. When gluing miters, the end grain of the joint likes to soak up the glue (like a bunch of straws bunched together), so a trick I use to combat this is to first put a small amount of glue on the joint giving it a minute to soak in. This essentially seals the end grain, and then I come back around with a second coat of glue to bring the joint together.
To add even more strength, I used some Red Grandis, a species in the eucalyptus family like Blackbutt, to add some splines to the joint. With the floating tenons being closer to the inside of the joint, the splines add strength to the outside of the miter. This technique acts similar to a box joint, which is extremely strong, providing a lot of edge grain glue surface. The Red Grandis turned out to be a nice choice as it’s pink tones picked up on the pink-ish streaks in the Blackbutt.
Whitehurst Custom Woodworking 