That wobbly chair in your dining room isn't broken—it's just asking for attention. Before you drag it to the curb or scroll through furniture websites, consider this: the same joints that held together Egyptian coffins and Viking ships can be restored in your garage with basic tools and a weekend afternoon.

Furniture repair intimidates most people because they imagine complex carpentry skills and specialized equipment. The truth is simpler. Most loose furniture suffers from the same handful of joint failures, and fixing them requires understanding how wood connects rather than mastering advanced woodworking. Once you see the logic behind these ancient connections, you'll start noticing repair opportunities everywhere.

Before you can fix a joint, you need to identify what type you're dealing with. The mortise and tenon is the grandfather of wood joints—a rectangular projection (tenon) fits snugly into a matching hole (mortise). You'll find this in chair legs meeting seat frames, table aprons connecting to legs, and bed rails joining headboards. When this joint fails, it usually wobbles rather than completely separates.

Dowel joints look deceptively simple: round wooden pegs inserted into matching holes in both pieces. Mass-produced furniture loves dowels because they're fast to manufacture. The telltale sign is small round plugs or filled holes where pieces meet. These joints fail when the dowels snap, shrink, or when the glue deteriorates—often all three simultaneously in older pieces.

Pull the loose piece away gently and examine what you see. A rectangular stub means mortise and tenon. Round pegs mean dowels. Sometimes you'll find pocket holes—angled screws hidden under plugs—or simple butt joints reinforced with corner blocks. Knowing your joint type determines your entire repair strategy, so take a photo and compare it to reference images if you're unsure.

Takeaway

Always identify the joint type before attempting repair—pull the loose piece apart gently and examine the connection points to determine whether you're dealing with mortise and tenon, dowels, or reinforced butt joints.

PVA (polyvinyl acetate) is the yellow wood glue you've seen at every hardware store. It's forgiving, affordable, and creates bonds stronger than the wood itself when joints fit tightly. The catch: PVA needs close contact between surfaces—gaps wider than a playing card won't hold. For most home repairs where joints still fit snugly, this is your go-to choice. It sets in about an hour and cures fully overnight.

Epoxy excels where PVA fails: filling gaps. When wood has shrunk, chips are missing, or joints have worn loose over decades, two-part epoxy bridges those spaces. Mix equal parts resin and hardener, work quickly (you typically have 5-15 minutes), and expect serious holding power. The downside is permanence—future repairs become much harder because epoxy doesn't release cleanly.

For antiques or heirloom pieces, consider hide glue. This traditional adhesive made from animal collagen reverses with heat and moisture, allowing future repairs without damaging the wood. It's how furniture was built for centuries, and restoration professionals still prefer it. Hide glue requires more preparation—you'll heat it in a glue pot—but it rewards you with historically appropriate, reversible repairs.

Takeaway

Match your glue to your gap: PVA for tight-fitting joints, epoxy for loose or damaged connections, and hide glue for antiques you want to preserve for future generations.

Glue means nothing without pressure. Wood joints need to be held firmly while adhesive cures, but clamping furniture presents unique challenges—irregular shapes, finished surfaces, and angles that standard clamps weren't designed for. The solution starts with protective padding. Never let bare metal touch wood. Cork sheets, felt scraps, or even folded cardboard between clamp jaws and your furniture prevents crushing and finish damage.

For chair legs and round components, band clamps (also called strap clamps) wrap around the entire assembly and tighten evenly from all directions. They're inexpensive and solve problems that regular bar clamps can't touch. When repairing a chair, you'll often need to reglue multiple joints simultaneously—band clamps let you squeeze the whole seat frame at once rather than fighting with four separate clamps.

Sometimes the best clamp is no clamp at all. Heavy objects, ratchet straps, surgical tubing, and even strategically placed weights can provide adequate pressure for smaller repairs. The key is even distribution—you want pressure spread across the joint, not concentrated at single points. Check your setup from multiple angles before walking away. Glue squeeze-out tells you pressure is adequate; no squeeze-out means you need more force.

Takeaway

Always protect finished surfaces with padding, and remember that proper clamping is about even pressure distribution—glue squeezing out along the joint line confirms you've got it right.

Every piece of furniture you repair is a piece saved from the landfill and a skill deposited in your hands. These techniques—identifying joints, choosing appropriate adhesives, applying proper pressure—transfer to countless future projects. The wobbly chair teaches you principles that fix the loose table leg, the separated drawer, the rickety bookshelf.

Start with something low-stakes: a garage sale find or that basement chair nobody would miss. Make your mistakes on practice pieces. Within a few repairs, you'll develop the confidence to tackle family heirlooms and quality furniture worth preserving for another generation.