This door might qualify as one of the worst engineered doors I've ever seen. The stub tenon machined to hold its corners together failed miserably. I guess that's what helps keep people like me in business. Right?
To compound things - the doors (yes, two poorly made doors!) were hung on an aquarium cabinet. When the tank leaked - the drawers dampened and swelled, popping those corners wide open.
The good news is.... we have the technology to fix it!
I waited for the wood to dry out a bit - in this weather, in didn't take long. Once I could pull the joint closed, the repair was a simple one.
Thanks to my friends in the medical world, I have a good supply of syringes, perfect for injecting glue into small places.
A bit of glue, injected along the entire length of this joint mostly did the trick, as this bit of squeeze-out proves.
Clamping in both directions was necessary, I had to coax the joint back together.
These clamp pads keep the wood from being damaged.
Finally - to ensure that the joint didn't separate in the future, I decided to pin it. The size of the tenon didn't give me much wiggle room, so an 1/8" pin was all I could manage.
Of course, I didn't want to accidentally drill through the face of the door, so I needed a stop on my bit. Some people use a piece of tape, but that doesn't work so well for me. I've accidentally drilled through things using tape as a depth stop - so I pulled out one of my Fuller Tapered Countersink bits and flipped the stop backwards, to create my stop. I can't tell you how useful these bits are!
Call me McGuyver.
An 1/8" dowel and a dab of glue adds a great deal of strength to this joint. I pinned each corner of the door, to ward off future problems.
Once the glue dried, I pared the pins flush with a VERY sharp chisel and...
another repair completed!
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