Repairing a Tripod Table - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

This is the base of a reproduction pie crust table. It's a nice base, solid mahogany. It must be 50, 60 years old, something like that. And the legs have come unglued. I'm going to re-glue them. It's a difficult glue-up. And what's worse is that someone has attempted to glue up one of well as I can, so it's time to glue this up. Because the leg is curved, there's no great way to clamp it, but I'll show you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this clamp. It's called a hand screw. I'm going to fold over some sandpaper, tape it to the jaws. Now, I want these jaws to be the exact width of my leg here. And I want to make sure that the jaws are parallel to this part of the leg. I want to get the maximum surface area that I can. And I'm even going to give it just a little bit of a tighten with a pair of pliers here. Now I'm going to tape a block of wood across the back of the clamp. It looks really good. I'll let this dry overnight, and then I'll do the other leg. Okay, so the glue-up seems really strong. The legs are good. I just need now to do some touch-up work where there's still some old glue here that I've got to get off, and also where my sandpaper came in contact with the legs. I need to lightly sand that and touch it up with a little aerosol lacquer. I don't put metal on pieces of furniture or metal supports and stuff except for one case, and that's the case of a tripod table like this. These legs are dialed into this pedestal, and the weight of this table and anything that's put on the table, because of the design of the table, it pulls these legs away from the pedestal. Sometimes what I'll do here is I like to add a metal strap right here to give some mechanical support to that leg. You frequently see that on antique tables and even new tables at the factory. They'll add a support there to prevent that. It's basically a design flaw that the weight of the table is going to pull these legs away from that pedestal. So this little scuffed area here is where my sandpaper was when I had my clamps on, so I just need to sand that lightly with a little 320 and then give it a little aerosol lacquer, and it should be fine. So here we are, this nice pie crust table. The legs are all re-glued. As you can see, it's a fairly good-sized table. I'm glad I put those straps on the bottom. Somebody could put, conceivably, a rather heavy lamp or other object on here. We don't have to worry about them separating again.