I had a tough little project this weekend. I had to repair an old rocking chair so when my wife has the baby she can have a rocking chair to sit in while feeding.
This thing is a bit of an antique and some of the wood peg joints have come loose. Fairly easy to fix but I ran into a bit of a problem along the way.
Both the arms were detatched. This would normally be an easy wood glue fix but the arms are also attached by two crooked wood screws.
Sadly these screws are completely stripped. I first tried the rubber band trick where you put a rubber band over the screw head and jab a screwdriver in there to get a bit of extra torque. Unfortunately this method only works on less extreme examples of a stripped screw head.
I also tried using my metal files to cut a slot for a flathead. Unfortunately this would have taken forever by hand and probably would have burnt out one of my files. So I moved to a different tool.
The next step I tried was a to use a screw extractor. With this method you first drill into the middle of the screw with a metal drill bit. Then you use the other strange spiral extractor to bore into the screw. After that you can use a pair of pliers to slowly twist out the screw.
Unfortunately these screws were probably some kind of heat treated metal that made them too dense to bore into. All I was able to do was create a tiny divet in the center...
The next thing to try is using a dremel with a grinding stone to cut a slot into the screw head and turn it into a flat head screw.
This method actually went pretty fast and sent some sparks flying as I cut the slot into the phillips head.
Finally success!!! The slot method worked perfectly and I was finally able to remove the chair arms so I could glue them down onto the wooden support pegs again.
I wonder what sort of metal these screws are made out of. Seems like a pretty tough alloy of some kind as the metal drill bits barely made a dent in them.
Now for the easy part. Just put some glue into the peg holes in the arm and press them back onto the pegs. Let it sit for about 30 min with weight on the arms.
Now the arms are reseated and are staying put. I used completely new standard wood screws to reattach the arms at the joint. This way I don't have to deal with that heavy duty metal again if the arms ever need to be removed.
Now the antique chair is ready to go. I just had to put some oil in the joints to get it to stop squeaking while rocking. I suspect I'll be donating this thing to a furniture reseller once the baby is crawling and old enough to start putting her head into small spaces. I remember my sister getting her head stuck in a wooden chair when I was young. We had to put butter on her ears to squeeze her head back out from between the wooden pegs lol.
My next weekend experience will probably be continued childproofing of our place before the baby arrives.
Thanks for looking :-)