A couple of months ago, The Wife’s Aunt asked me if I could fix this chair. She then proceeded to show me how it was very “wobbly.” She was concerned that it would break the next time someone sat in it.
She had good reason to be concerned. The glue in most of the joints between the legs and the cross pieces had failed and in most cases the tenons were working their way apart. Somewhere along the way, someone had attempted to “fix” the problem by smearing a heavy layer of glue all over the joints. This attempt probably worked right up until someone sat in it- glue isn’t a structural medium. It’s a binding medium to use with structural elements in a project.
At any rate, after looking it over a bit I felt it was salvagable. She took the pressure off me when she said she wouldn’t be heartbroken if it wasn’t fixable. I figured I had nothing to lose since, if I broke something critical while pulling it apart, I could just tell her it didn’t work out.
But that wasn’t the goal.