Ackerman's Furniture Workshops

		ackerman@ackermans.com
		DENVER : (303)798-3220
		MPLS/ST.PAUL : (952)890-2284
		CHICAGO : (630)736-8880

Our Repair Staff

We have assembled a team of excellent prep, repair and touch-up people. Our wood shop is equipped the finest tools and equipment - operated by knowing craftsman. Your piece is as important to them as is to you. The people that have joined our company over the last 30 years (a generation!) have been a combination of trained professionals and people with the talent and desire to learn the trade.

Furniture is very specialized when it comes to craftsmen and takes someone dedicated to develop into the finest in the trade. Under the guidance of Jim Ackerman, the staff is well trained, managed and proud of their workmanship. Many of the staff have been with us for years, some are learning the industry at entry level - in the strip booth. That's where the refinishing process begins - Jim did his time there and insists everyone enjoy the same experience. In our back room we have dedicated people there to help restore your furniture to it's original condition. We are proud of their workmanship and stand behind it with our warranties. If you have any questions about the shop, the process in which we restore your furniture, please call us or come by, we would be very pleased to give you a tour and have you meet everyone.

Our most common repair is the regluing of chair bases. When one joint becomes loose, the stress placed on the other joints increases, and soon all of the joints are loose, or worse yet, something breaks. The best bet is to reglue the base before this occurs.

Chairs with wooden seats normally have legs that attach directly to the seat, with stretchers between each of the legs. When these legs get loose they compress the end of the leg inside the seat, and open up the dowel holes they go into. If glue is simply injected into the hole surrounding the leg, the repair will last only a short time. A process called blind wedging must be used to resize the leg in the hole.

Chairs with fabric seats generally have aprons that the legs are doweled into. Again, as the leg moves, the dowels become deformed and weak. The only solution is to replace all the dowels with oversize dowels, flat sand the aprons where they meet the legs, and realign the glue blocks.

While we still use hide glues in our Mpls./St. Paul and Chicago shops, in Denver the increased elasticity of aliphatic resin glues is needed. Although not quite as strong as the hide glues, these newer glues are able to cope with the wood movement caused by our Denver climate.

Almost every repair is followed by some degree of touch up to hide the repair. In the case of laminations, where new wood is grafted into old, the touch up can be more time consuming than the repair itself. In a few instances, the best route is to refinish the repaired section or the entire piece complete.