a chippendale chair repair

a few photos here for my client of a chippendale chair that had a broken back splat.

the splat was broken and badly reglued at some point with some kind of flexible adhesive like substance.  after a little study, we determined that the best/ fastest/ most correct thing to do was to reinforce the broken spot with strips of matching mahogany.
click the photos to enlarge them..

due to the curve of the backsplat, we had to make an angled jig to hold the splat while we routed the slots for the reinforcing strips.  it seems very solid now that the glue has set.

we also had to excavate the piece of broken tenon from the chair frame itself, and then create a new stepped slip tenon ... sorry i missed that picture as it was a complex little deal due to the fact that the original tenon was flush with the back edge of the splat, and not something we
could replace/repair without the patch being visible ..

all done, with the touch up color and blending in ok ...

any other repair option would have required us to do some
scarfing and likely some carving on the original part.

all in all, a pretty successful repair that left the original backsplat complete
and ready for another 100 years.

update 8/15
we had such success with the first one, that we got to do another one

both tenons broken on this one

no choice but to have a visible patch

a little color touch up monday and it will be good to go ..

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