Repairing a chair

One of the kitchen chairs has wobbled for as long as I have owned it. It came from a market stall, it cost almost nothing, and for three years I have been sitting on it carefully, shifting my weight like someone crossing a frozen pond.

Last month I finally took it apart. The joints were mortise and tenon, held with an old animal glue that had turned to brittle amber. A few taps with a rubber mallet and the whole frame came apart in my hands, which felt like a small betrayal and also a gift: whoever built it had assumed someone would need to do this one day.

That is the thing I keep thinking about. Hide glue is reversible. Warm it up and it lets go. Modern glues are stronger, but they are also final. The chair was designed, perhaps without anyone saying so out loud, to be repaired.

I cleaned the old glue off with warm water and a toothbrush, which took an entire Saturday afternoon. One tenon had shrunk, so I glued a thin shaving of beech to one face and pared it back until it slid in with firm hand pressure. Then fresh hide glue, a band clamp around the legs, and a night on a flat floor.

It does not wobble now. It is not a beautiful chair, but it is a better one than it was, and I know it in a way I never knew it before. I know which leg is slightly shorter. I know where the previous owner drove a nail in a moment of desperation.

Most things I own are not built to be opened. I do not think I can change that, but I can notice the ones that are, and look after them a little more.