Seat Repairs 8-24-14

So, we kind of left off here yesterday.  I was preparing to pour Abatron Liquid Wood into all the defects I could find, including upholstery tack holes.

This I did.

Then I spent all afternoon wondering if I should wait for the Liquid Wood to harden before applying the WoodEpox putty.  Finally I went to the Abatron site and watched a video, which said, don't bother to wait until the Liquid Wood is hard (instruction sheet is long gone).

So at 9:30pm last night, with my husband still waiting for dinner (fortunately he is absorbed in a good book), I am frantically stuffing WoodEpox into all the craters and cracks, while the Liquid Wood was still slightly sticky.

This bought me another relaxing full day, sanding.

I am so eternally thankful I sanded before the WoodEpox fully cured!. Anyway, the results are in.  Here is the left (mismatched) corner.  Looks kinda like a baseball seam or a sewed up wound.  The big patch of white above the corner is a large divot in the wood, filled with fairing compound earlier.

Here's the corner in the upright position.

And the right side, which required more TLC than I realized.

  Right corner, sitting upright.

These repairs look REALLY good to me, but of course it's not how the repairs look when they're fresh, but how they'll hold up.

The important thing is that the repair material used is STRUCTURAL as opposed to cosmetic.  "Bondo", plastic auto body filler is cosmetic - and it's made for metal.  Yet many people attempt to fill gaps in carriage parts with Bondo. And I think they frequently apply it over a layer of crud, expecting it to stick. The thing I like about Liquid Wood is that it seeps into inaccessible cracks and makes the crud a permanent structural component! The material selected for these repairs is a material designed specifically for these types of restoration applications.  My experience has been good so I will hope for the best. One can always fix paint, but usually you only get one shot at making a really good, lasting repair.

All the really hard work took place on the inside surfaces.  This is the right hand corner, the dry-rot corner.

A little closer look.  The Liquid Wood infused wood is rock hard.

And the inside of the mis-fit corner.  I thought I'd NEVER get all the excess putty out of this corner!  The "shattered" looking wood is also rock hard now.

All the tack holes and cracks are filled, ready for new upholstery!

A good, thorough sanding of the inside leaves our little carriage seat looking considerably less feral, and ready to receive new protective coatings!

I still have to address that gap in the two back panels, but I'm waiting for a new material to arrive before I do that.

And I'll see if hubby will help me with the corner blocks tomorrow (although I think he's more interested in going to town to buy batteries for the travel trailer).

Tomorrow I will also give the bottom seat frame the Abatron treatment.

This discovery, at the very front of the seat frame edge, got my curiosity up!  Those are screw holes, sawed in half!  One will never know, will one?  All gone tomorrow.