Getting well plus cabin fever equals fixing a chair

kw: photo essays, home maintenance, repairs, diy

I was sick with a bad cough and recurring fever for about a week, the longest bout of "cold" I can remember. I needed lots of "horizontal time" in bed. A visit to the doctor three days ago brought the cheery news that I had a sinus infection and middle ear infection tagging along, which bought me antibiotics and steroids. Oh Joy! By yesterday morning I had too much energy to sleep all day, but I was still coughing too much for public consumption, so I took apart a wobbly dining room chair and re-glued it. Just for fun, here is the process.

Disclaimer: I am no pro, as you'll easily see. But I've done this enough over the years to be able to get it done in a couple of hours (of my work time, not total time) instead of several days. The glue I use is Titebond II Premium Wood Glue. All these photos are either 800 or 1024 pixels in the long dimension. Click on a photo to see it that size. (There are two pairs that I montaged.)

1) The seat (bottom right, upside down) attaches with 4 screws. The corners of the main frame have 8 more screws holding 4 corner braces. I started by removing all those.

2) Then I used the tip of a chisel to pry open joints that were loose, starting at the front of the chair.

All the pegs holding the joints were firmly glued at one end and loose at the other, except for the two holding the lower brace (the "H" shape at upper right), which was solidly together. At top left are the two front legs; below them the sides and front of the seat support frame. The three bits scattered inside the "H" are corner braces. One corner brace was very firmly attached on one side and I left it alone.

3) This closeup shows that the first gluing needs to be done to close cracks in the structural members. I started by applying some force to open the cracks a little more and then taking a finger-ful of glue and rubbing it into each crack. Then it is ready to clamp and wipe clean.

This shows a joint in the clamp, with glue being squeezed out, ready to wipe up. If the clamp must press onto a crack that will leak glue, I pre-squeeze it by hand and wipe what I can, and use wax paper between the piece and the clamp. The next two photos show various clamps and a vise holding these pieces while they dry. It takes about an hour. With the metal C-clamp I use pine wood blocks to protect the work piece.

4) Once all three seat frame were solid, I assembled the two side supports to the chair back, and also added the "H" strut. This entailed putting glue on all the pieces for one side at a time. In the case of the glue for the corner braces, I was careful not to get glue in the screw holes, so in the future the screws can be removed. After spreading the glue, I tightened the screws and those were set. I looked along them from the side to be sure they were lined up.

For the "H" brace, I just spread glue on the mating surfaces and the pins and pressed them into place, also sighting to get it square.

5) I assembled the front next, the front legs and the front seat support. There was a little wrinkle in getting the legs on, which I'll get into in a moment. But first, I was clamping them with a furniture clamp when one of the legs twisted and cracks opened in its top. So I put glue in the cracks and used the vise to hold that while all the joints dried. I made sure the legs were parallel. Note the blocks of wood in the vise, holding the leg being clamped. Pine blocks are softer than oak so they won't bruise the wood or mar the finish (though that is pretty beat up already from decades of use).

6) Once the front assembly was set, I put glue on all remaining joints and pressed it into place. Then I put the chair on the floor and used a furniture clamp to clamp the seat support, and a rope, looped four times, to clamp at the bottom to hold the "H" brace and provide added support while everything dried. I used a section of floor that I already know is flat so I could press down the chair every-which-way so it would not rock when it was finished.

7) Now to the wrinkle I mentioned. In one end of the front assembly there was glue at the bottom of the holes the pegs go into, that held them back from seating fully. Yeah, I know they came out of there, but wood can subtly shift, and in the two pictures below the one on the left shows a gap that I could not close. Trying to close it caused the cracks in the leg I mentioned in step 5.

I made thin shims by splitting veneer from scraps of paneling and glued them into place all around to fill the gaps and strengthen the joint.

8) Finally, I glued the corner braces and screwed them into place. And now, voila! The finished chair, ready for the seat to be screwed on.

Stuff from old pipes

kw: home maintenance, do it yourself, diy, faucets, photographs

We are living in a house as old as we are, built before 1950. About a year after we moved in (when the house was a mere 50 years old) one of the faucets began failing. It took a lot of looking (there was no Amazon nor E-bay yet) to find a replacement. Nearly all modern faucets have a 4" (100 mm) spacing between the hot and cold inlets, but this was 8" (200 mm), and the sink is a style called Shelf Front. Now the Chicago Faucet Co. sells them on the Web, as this image from their online catalog shows.

The red arrow points to the metal, threaded ring that holds the aerator, upon which today's tale depends. An aerator is a bit more complex than most folks realize. It has a small orifice that limits the flow and a sinuous path for the water to follow to a screen. There is a tiny gap that lets air enter above the screen, and the air-water mix that exits the screen flows more gently than a purely water stream.

The orifice in the aerator's top is 1/16" (1.6 mm) in diameter and the innards have some holes even smaller, before you get to the 5-mesh screen, with 0.3 mm holes. As you may imagine, any sediment that gets into the water pipes will be screened out in the aerator, at least the larger particles. That is why it is made to be disassembled, but I wonder how many people ever take one apart to clean it. They are not costly, so I reckon most folks just replace an aerator that starts "acting funny".

"Acting funny" is indeed what we encountered this morning, when the sound changed and water began flowing out rather irregularly. So I grabbed a pair of pliers and began.

A pair of ordinary pliers is all you need for this. They have two settings, so use the wider setting. Grab the aerator ring and rotate clockwise. Once it is loosened, it ought to unscrew with fingertip pressure. This picture of the aerator in its ring, with the gasket still in place, was taken at a later stage in the process, which I'll get to soon. When I initially removed it, the large chunks were not there and the orifice was clear.

What I did after that was just turn on the water—not all the way, as it ran quite fast!—and hold the aerator, still in the ring, upside down and spray it. A lot of small bits of grit came out. This image shows them. I sprayed into the sink with the stopper closed, and wiped them out with a tissue after slowly draining the sink. Their brownish color shows they are composed mainly of iron minerals. These minerals form naturally inside the pipe, particularly on the hot side, if the water is somewhat hard.

A couple of bits, one dark and the other shiny, are magnetic, so they probably come from wear inside the faucet. The image has been scaled to match the magnification of the one just above. As you can see, the larger chunks could just barely fit through the 1.6 mm orifice.

After collecting the grit, I ran the water full blast from the hot side first. A lot of things came out, and in larger sizes. The faster flow without the restricting orifice mobilized junk that had been collecting for years, probably at a turn in the pipe. This image shows them.

I collected that grit, then ran the cold side, full on. A lot less grit came out, as this image shows. I thought I was finished, so I put the aerator back in. I tested by running the water, and after just a few seconds the aerator hiccuped and began spraying even more unevenly.

When I removed it again, the result was as you see in the large image above, with two large pieces of grit clogging the orifice, and I was sure, lots more inside. I guess I hadn't let the hot water run long enough.

This time I took the aerator out of the ring and took it apart. The next image shows it after cleaning. The little part on the right had grit in nearly all the little square holes along its edge. Its other side holds the blue plate with the 1.6 mm orifice. The body with the screen is the blue thing at top, and the black ring on the left is the seal gasket. A ring that holds in the inner piece is at bottom. The metal ring that holds all this and screws onto the faucet is not shown.

Getting these parts clean was the trickiest part, but just involved some fiddly work with a toothpick.

This is the final harvest of grit. The pieces that were stuck in the orifice are at the bottom.

The whole job took an hour, about as long as I've been writing this post! Is a little part like this worth an hour of my time? It would take at least an hour to go to a hardware or plumbing store and get one, and I'd be paying a couple dollars besides. I was brought up hearing a number of frugal New England proverbs, including

Use it Up
Wear it Out
Make it Do or
Do Without

By the way, here is my setup for taking photos of small items. For all but one photo I used a +10 Macro add-on lens (100 mm focal length). For the photo of the four parts together I used a +4 Closeup add-on lens (250 mm focal length). The camera that the lenses fit has a close focus distance of 1.2 m.

The background is a black paper divider from a notebook. The translucent plate is the lid of a small butter tub. The two blue light sources are "work lights" with 24 LED's each, that I got at Harbor Freight. They have a magnet on the back, so I store them on the side of the refrigerator. I used folded bits of paper to tilt them slightly for better light. For larger-scale work I'll make a sheet metal holder that can point them more robustly, but for now this works great.

Kitchen conspiracy

kw: remodeling, home maintenance

Our house was built in 1952. The first owner remodeled the kitchen in 1976. That's 36 years ago. The appliances are on their last legs. Now, wouldn't you know it, we find we can't get away with just replacing the appliances.

Item: The 17-cu-ft refrigerator is 66.5 inches tall, 32 wide and 28 deep (including handles). The nearest sized unit is 29.5 wide and 33.5 deep, and is 18 cu-ft. To get a unit less than 32 inches deep we'd have to go to a 10 cu-ft refrig. it would look silly in the space. We've almost decided to get the 18 cu-ft unit and take off the handles. Then it'll only stick out 3.5 inches more than the current one. I think we can live with that. It won't quite block the kitchen door.

Item: The counters and other appliances are 24 inches deep. The kicker is the stove. It is 29 inches wide, which was the standard in the 1970s. All new stoves are 30 inches wide (except for a few that are 24 wide), and it is also hard to find one only 24 inches deep. The current trend is 26 inches or more.

So, do I go for a half remodel, with new lower cabinets and counters? It'll come to some $20,000 in this area, appliances included. If they'd kept the same standards as before, I could replace the appliances for a couple thousand. Instead, I have to spend ten times as much. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

Adding to the economy

kw: family events, home maintenance

"Work fascinates me. I can watch it all day long." I don't know who said that, but I spent all day watching work today. We had our garage doors replaced. The ones we've had were made primarily of 3/8" (9mm) plywood with framing to hold the mountings. There's a point where one more paint job just makes them look worse, and we wanted more insulation.

I confess I hadn't given a thought to how it is done. The three workers dismantled the doors piece by piece, by unbolting all the hardware. Then they took down the rails. The longest part of the job was getting the new rails mounted and lined up. Once that was done, the new doors were put together into the rails, section by section, and the hardware holds the sections together. Altogether, about five hours of work.

A part aging badly

kw: home maintenance

Two weeks ago I replaced a faucet washer that began to leak after about two years. The "new" one I put in, the last of a box of mixed washers I bought years ago, was hard to turn off hard enough to stop it leaking from the start.

Last night I replaced it again, with a fresh one. The two-week-used washer is on the left in this picture. Once it cracked (seen at the bottom), it couldn't be kept from leaking. It is actually crumbling apart. The hard rubber these are made of apparently ages and hardens if it is not used within about ten years of manufacture. Of course, when I bought replacements, I had to buy ten in a little packet. If these last two years each, half of them will go bad by the time I've used five or six.

Good for another century

kw: home maintenance, photographs

We have a dining set of cherry wood that my great uncle gave us as a wedding present. It was nearly 100 years old in 1975. Under the table is a stencil saying that it was made by the Angelus Furniture Company. I assume the company by that name in Corona, CA is the same one. The table was used in Vermont until it was sent to us.

In recent years, the table top has been getting wobbly, so I decided to tighten it as a Thanksgiving weekend project. This picture shows the gluing operation on one of the leg assemblies. I don't have a large clamp, so I put a piece of petrified wood on top, which weighs more than 100 pounds (45+ kg).

Each of the two leg assemblies is attached to an 8"x8"x1.25" (20x20x3.2 cm) oak block, which was glued and screwed to a larger oak block which is screwed to the table top. Removing a leg assembly for shipping entails unscrewing the larger oak block. But getting the two blocks separated required breaking the glue bond. We did that, and pulled off the smaller oak blocks from the leg post, because the glue was already broken there.

I put carpenter's wood glue on the top of the post and on the scar on the block, and used the method you see here to clamp them while the glue dried. Then I re-glued the whole assembly back to the larger block, and it is clamped by the screws. I suppose if I'd used hot bone glue it might have been better, because if the top works loose again it could be repaired again. I'm betting it lasts the rest of our lives. We just now set the table back upright and it feels much more stable than before.

Filling the money pit

kw: home maintenance

It isn't hard to see what is inside a garage door opener. Just unplug it and remove four screws (from this model at least) and the cover drops off. I've been swamped with a lot of home maintenance stuff, and this was the last for a little while. The garage door opener jammed a few days ago, and I knew I was out of my depth, so I called in a repairman.

Boy, howdy would I have been out of my depth, trying to do this one! First, the gentleman used a pair of pliers to turn the motor back so the rail wasn't jammed any more, then he removed the limit switch assembly.

Some navigation aids: the motor is the biggest thing in the case, or course, set at an angle. The ring gear that it drives is partially visible at lower center. On the plate that holds the ring gear, you can see the limit switch assembly: three threaded nylon rods with the switches on them, and some wires attached.

Here is the limit switch assembly close up. A gear drives the middle screw, which carries the switch actuator. One switch is at top left, at the end of the "upper" nylon rod, and the other is near bottom right, on the other rod. You can see the holes where one may stick a screwdriver to adjust these things.

The old assembly was badly worn, so I'm glad it is replaced. There are three wires the repairman removed and attached to the new unit, each a different color. I'd probably have gotten them back in the wrong order! For a job like this, I don't mind that the labor costs 90% of the total bill. It was worth it.

Oven more resilient than they think

kw: local events, observations, home maintenance

Replacing a burnt-out (partially melted) oven element from a forty-year-old range is no trivial undertaking. I'll forego a blow-by-blow rant on the five hour process. Just the facts I was faced with:

• Waste King has not made ranges for more than twenty years.
• The "book" (no web site had the model number) at the parts place showed about 100 WK oven elements, but none was even close to the one we brought in.
• We considered replacing the whole range, but it is 29.5 inches (75 cm) wide and all modern units are at least 30 inches (76.2 cm). The "hole" it needs to fit in is 29-5/8 inch (75.25 cm).
  
• It is also 24 inches (61 cm) deep, much shallower than modern units.
• Somebody needs to design an oven with the connections to the heating element in front. It took me two hours to get the element out.
  
• The heating element is marked 240V, 2700W. Most modern heating elements are 3000W or more. The guy at the parts store warned against using a different element.

OK, on that last point: I know physics. A 2700W element at 240V will use 10.8 Amps, so its resistance (hot) needs to be 22.2 Ohms. A 3000W element will use 12.5 Amps and resist at 19.2 Ohms. More on such figures anon.

The parts store manager got me in contact with a local repairman whom he called "the McGiver of appliances". Turns out this guy is a gem. He said the oven switch had plenty of capacity to handle 12 amps or more, because it was sized to run the oven and broiler both, and the broiler has a hotter element. He said it is worth a try with an element that hooks up the same (there are a lot of those).

His shop is one of those wonders of the lost art of mix-and-match repair work. He has a few dozen old ranges on the floor, plus hundreds of other used appliances. But most of his space contains parts from discarded units. Among a few thousand oven heater elements, he chose two (of many) that would fit the connections, though they are a bit smaller than the one being replaced. Others were clearly too large. He also found one clearly marked 1800W, so we had a standard to use for checking resistance.

1800W at 240V means 7.5 Amps and 32 Ohms. His Ohmmeter showed this one was 45 Ohms, cold. That makes sense; Nichrome wire loses a little resistance when it heats up, but not so much that it runs away with itself. So now we had a factor: 45/32 = 1.4. I needed a resistance between 1.4x22.2 = 31 and 1.4x19.2 = 27 (both rounded a bit), and I would not care much if it was a little higher than 31 Ohms.

Both the "near fits" came in about 33 Ohms, so I bought them. One was cleaner than the other, so I cleaned it some more and put it in. It heats up a bit more slowly than the oven used to, because I suspect it is a 2400W element. Fine by me.

Anyone out there whose oven element melts on them: find a place with used parts, and it is likely you can locate an element that will work well and extend the life of your range. I saved myself a kitchen remodel for $30 (plus five hours of my time).

Steamed over a dehumidifier

kw: home maintenance, dehumidifiers

We have a Frigidaire dehumidifier, the 50 pint-per-day model, in our basement. It is about a year old. It has a "convenience feature" of a connection for a hose for continuous draining so you don't have to empty the drip bucket. However, on two prior occasions I've had to clean gunk out of the hose, some kind of mold or bacterial stuff that gradually builds up.

Just before midnight last evening I heard its "bucket full" alarm ring. I thought it strange, because I just cleaned the hose and drain connection a few weeks ago. I decided to "bite the bullet" and took the mechanism apart. Then it was clear what was happening.

Because of the hose connection, there is a drip pan below the coils, and this pan was full of mold, which was blocking the outlet to the hose. The mold feeds on dust that gradually collects from air passing through the unit. The coils had some dust buildup, not much, because there is a pre-filter that gets most of it, and we keep that clean.

The outcome: it took about an hour and a half for my wife and I to get all the mold out of there. Though in general the unit is well engineered, there is no provision for cleaning mold out of the drip pan without removing the side panels, which is no simple task. In fact, it is clear that mold buildup was never thought of when the unit was designed. It required a lot of fishing with a bent wire to get chunks of mold that were under the coils. The drip pan is less than a half inch below the coils.

Just putting this pan one inch lower would have made the unit much easier to clean, and for added convenience, some tubing and wires that block part of one side could be re-routed. A side panel that opens, even if it unscrews, would make it simpler to get inside for cleaning. And it ought to be possible to make the pan removable by sliding out when the side panel is removed.

Hey, Frigidaire engineers, just a word to the wise, OK?