How To Repair Bamboo Furniture

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/ten/18/garden/repairing-impairment-to-bamboo-article of furniture.html

REPAIRING Damage TO BAMBOO Article of furniture

Oct. 18, 1984

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October xviii, 1984

Section C , Page

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TRYING to detect someone to repair bamboo furniture can be frustrating. But once bamboo's peculiarities are known, simple repairs can be washed by anyone who is handy.

Except for the bulging, solid nodes that divide the hollow stems, bamboo grows directly with sides that taper very slightly along its length. With such a textile, conventional methods used for joining solid forest obviously cannot be employed.

If if weren't for their irregular surfaces, the nodes would exist a good spot to connect the joints in furniture, using nails or screws; instead, it usually falls to the hollow tubes to acquit the strain. This section is chosen because it can be easily cut and shaped for a shut-fitting join. But when a heavily laden piece of bamboo piece of furniture is dragged over a floor, the strain may cause splitting.

The best and easiest mode to repair such damage is to brand the hollow sections solid. The open-ended hollow length should be filled with a plug of solid wood, which is glued in place. Since the bamboo should not be weakened past removing internal fibers, shape the plug to fit the bamboo - not the opposite. Choose a slightly oversize dowel and pare information technology, using a hand plane with the blade adapted finely. Turn the dowel slightly after each pass with the plane until the plug tin go home snugly when coated with glue. Apply either brown hide glue or white woods glue.

Because clamping is impractical, bind the repair with fine string that has been fatigued across the edge of a block of wax a couple of times. The wax will keep the cord from sticking as the glue dries. Space the string apart a trifle then you tin can see the splits coming together.

Where joins have been bound with cane, for either strength or decoration, the binding should ever be replaced with new material later on repairs. Soak the binding cane for 10 minutes in hot h2o and then bind equally tightly as possible, gluing and tucking the ends underneath. Afterwards drying, the binding volition shrink and tighten, making the joints more secure.

Scuffed bamboo areas can be waxed with brown wax, 0000 steel wool and a rubbing fabric.