One of my client’s brought me a chair to fix and it just so happened to be damage created by her dog. Evidently the dog loves this chair and decided to naw off the chair arm. I agreed to the fix, even though I’d never made a repair quite like this one. I popped over to YouTube to see if anyone had ever repaired anything from a dog, but the repairs weren’t anything like what I was dealing with. Down a little further into the rabbit hole I went trying to find something comparable in repair, when I stumbled on a repair to a missing portion of a table leg. Once I had the right keywords, I found several tutorials that described how they went about repairing missing parts to chair legs, table legs, etc.
Even though, my repair wasn’t related to missing a piece due to it breaking off at some point in it’s life, I figured the process they were performing would work for my dog chewed area. There were 2 different styles of repairs: one using the hot glue method (which I was scared to attempt not knowing how it might fair in my application) and the method I decided upon: make a mold of the good side and use wood bondo to sculpt the new chair arm.
Now in true Taylor fashion, I have no idea where some of the footage went of the bondo process. So those steps are as follows:
STEP ONE: Mix your Bondo per package directions. Only mix a small amount at a time because of the time to work factor (it’s really short!)
STEP TWO: Apply the Bondo in small layers on the area to be repaired and then press your mold to provide your shape. Allow to harden and remove the mold. You may need to add a few more layers, depending on how much you have to build up your area.
STEP THREE: Sand, sand, sand! This is where the fine-tuning comes in. We used fine grit sand paper and xacto knives to help with cutting in some of the details that needed to be more pronounced.
Once you’ve gotten to a point where you’re like, this looks as good as it’s going to get, it’s time to let it fully cure and then paint. I read so many different tutorials and blog posts that stated the wood bondo was stainable. It is absolutely NOT stainable. Do not be deceived! You most definitely have to work with paints and toners. Wood bondo dries light greenish-grey. I ended up using a variety of brown spray paints (spray into a small plastic cup and apply with a tiny paint brush) to get my base and then repeated with a variety of toners (seen in the video) to complete the final look. Press play below to watch!
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