This is my desk chair, and it is by far the single piece of furniture I have put the most effort into, unless you count pianos as furniture, as some do. I first saw this piece rotting in my friend's yard, and after lamenting over it decaying there for a few years, I bought it off him. It was a great decision. I'd always wanted a nice chair with mechanical controls, and instantly fell in love with the general style of the thing. The legs and back posts are solid wood, connected to thick steel brackets, and the heart of the chair is this big device, all riveted together, adorned with manually operated knobs and wheels for the adjustments. I'm especially fond of the big coil spring that holds the back in place.

When I started to actually use it, it was hard to ignore how much damage had been done by the elements. It really doesn't take much time for something to suffer a lot of damage from being outside. The plywood panels that made up the seat and back were delaminating and the rusted screws were pulling out, so pieces would sometimes just fall off. The casters didn't move. All of the adjustments were rusted in place. The fabric was stained and the foam underneath was crushed down. I still used it though, and as my specialty is keeping things just barely working when they really shouldn't, a few concentrated days of maintenance a year and plenty of patch jobs made it a usable piece of furniture.

Previous repairs involved plugging and redrilling screw holes for the legs where they fit into the metal hub, and making shims so they didn't creak as much. Plugging and redrilling holes holding the back rest to the swivels on the posts. Some screws were missing so I just replaced all of them at once. The back rest was never reupholstered, that is something I'd like to do eventually. The left back post split down the middle under stress from the dowels holding the cross beam in and cracking from extreme humidity changes, I did this repair with hide glue and it was a good enough repair that it is invisible unless you know where to look. At the base of the posts where they connect to the steel plate, the bolts were rusted in place, and the wood had compressed, the inability to adjust them caused the whole thing to be very loose and flop around. The bolts had to be cut out and replaced. Someday I will blue these bolts and fasten them with square nuts, as was original. I enjoy square nuts and try to use them on anything that had them as they were manufactured because they look neat and I like that they're essentially a little brick of metal with some threads tapped in.

It was only recently that I decided to begin an overhaul that I knew was necessary from the beginning. I can't afford to do everything I want to, like fabricating lost parts and replacing pieces that are too far gone, staining the wood, polishing and bluing the metal, but I can make it comfortable and sturdy. Starting with the upholstery, which I removed some time ago in preperation, and had been sitting in my closet for over half a year. The fabric itself washed out so well, it was incredible how easily the stains disappeared and it returned to a nice soft burlap, with a line of richer color at the edges where the sun never touched.

The piece of wood that forms the base of the seat is damaged beyond repair, but I have to work with what is availible to me. The screw holes are stripped out, it is severely warped, and is slowly crumbling into its constituent parts. I started by gluing the layers back together with liberally applied polyurethane wood glue (not going to bother with hide glue for this) and clamping with every clamp in my posession, which turned out to be twelve of them. I also tacked down the edges of the splintered parts in the center of the board, and put screws through the layers to secure them. Then, I drilled out the original mounting holes and doweled them, chiseling them flush to the wood, or as much as I could get. Because I'm dealing with wood on the precipice of actually rotting, a lot of material was lost before the dowels even went in. I also neglected to make any sort of locator jig, so when I tried to line it back up with the base, I couldn't really figure out where it should be. The warping and the fact that the tufting holes were drilled off center made it so difficult to place that I decided to center it right on the dowels to focus on the strength of the connection instead. I maintain that this was a good decision, if it's crooked at all, I definitely haven't noticed. All this took two days and left me with a board that was usable, made from a board ready for the burn pile.

The warping made the entire rest of the process slightly more difficult. I first had to cut the new foam to shape, and didn't have the means to do so. I tried making my own hot wire tool by removing the blade from my beloved coping saw and attaching a piece of baling wire connected to another piece of cheese wire, all done with some twisting hitch loops, and heated the cheese wire with a butane torch until it was red hot. This worked, but only for a couple millimeters at a time before it cooled. I learned then why the foam cutting wires are electrified. Maybe I could electrify my coping saw... Something to think about.

When the foam was cut, slowly and very jagged with a razor, I started stapling the fabric in place. My stapler was not compatible with the tiny upholstery staples I had, so only one in five staples were a success, and often it would try to staple many at once or fly open and vomit bent staples all over the work table. I should apologize to the stapler, really. But it did work eventually. The only thing to do then was the tufting, which I had never attempted before. I used some thick red thread and a large upholstery needle, it was painful to try to press it through the foam, I believe I should have cut holes in it before this, so I used a piano let-off tool to press the needle through. I then looped it around and pulled the fabric, and stapled the thread to the back of the board. Again, using the incorrect staples. It took a while. I think it's neat that you can see my threads stapled down next to the imprints of the originals. It was difficult to measure out exactly where I wanted it to be, and it turned out a little off center, but I am still very happy with the results.

Currently I am sitting in this chair, writing this with my NEC keyboard on my lap, and it is nice and comfortable, and clean, and sturdy. There's a lot more to do in the future but ultimately what I want for all of the things I work on is for them to be functional and durable. In this regard I consider my chair an undeniable success.