# Forum Forum Help Desk Introduce Yourself  Chipboard repair

## waterman

Hi folks
I'm new to the Forum and very inexperienced older person so could anyone help with advice on chipboard repair. A short cabriole leg has torn off the bottom of the chipbpard base of a very heavy double height wardrobe. Would it be possible to fill the broken part with ? and then cover with another sheet and refit the legs? If possible what would I used for fill please? My thanks in advance for any suggestions.
waterman

----------


## stevoh741

builders bog is available at most hardwares. It is a 2 part mix (like car bog) and goes off in about 8 mins. You cand sand it, drill it, plane it, ect. I wouldn't use anything else. Cheers

----------


## Master Splinter

I would definitely use something else - bog (polyester based filler) has pretty poor adhesion to timber and won't make a decent structural repair, especially if subject to side loads/concentrated loads such as a threaded section. 
You could (if you still have the bit that tore out) glue it back in with Aquahere or other PVA adhesive (clamp it or put some heavy books on the section while the glue dries),  
or 
Rebuild the missing section with marine epoxy thickened with sawdust/flour/aluminium powder/high strength filler. This stuff can be used to put oceangoing yachts together, and, unlike polyester, steel fastenings embedded in it will fail before the epoxy does.
Epoxy usage guides here - http://www.westsystem.com/ss/how-to-use/

----------


## waterman

Many thanks for your reply and will follow up your suggestions.

----------


## waterman

Your reply appreciated and will see how I go!

----------


## stevoh741

> I would definitely use something else - bog (polyester based filler) has pretty poor adhesion to timber

  Don't know what century you're living in mate but it has very good adhesion to timber and I for one have never had it fail on me.

----------


## Master Splinter

This century luvvie, and polyester bog hasn't changed much in the last 20+ years.  I don't think that the isophthalic resins have trickled their way down to bog yet. 
I've seen metal rust under professionally applied car bog, builder's bog delaminate from pine fascia, and bog crack around a screw set in it. Now that we've proved that the plural of anecdote is not data, bog is still styrene monomer and talc filler (unless you buy one of the metal reinforced ones).  It's not particularly water durable, and it doesn't stick to timber as well as epoxy, otherwise there'd be more professional boat builders using it to put together wooden boats. 
(If of course polyester bogs now do ionic bonding as well as mechanical bonding, I will indeed be behind the times.) 
Polyester builder's bog is useful for filling the odd decorative hole, but compared to epoxy, it's a one trick pony.   
I've yet to see a polyester bog that can be used to embed reinforcing for concrete, get certified for aerospace use, or be used as the main bonding system holding a 600 tonne wood boat together.  The epoxy used for the first and third examples is available off the shelf at most fibreglass and marine stores, and some woodwork stores, while you'd probably have to order aerospace stuff from Aircraft Spruce in the US. 
While epoxy is roughly twice the price of polyester bog, it's also considerably more useful - it can be a glue, a filler and a highly effective waterproofing agent for timber. 
However, if someone has built a small yacht out of timber and used Builder's Bog as the fastening system, I'd love to see details of it.

----------


## stevoh741

mate he is patching a wardrobe, not building the taj mahal.

----------


## Master Splinter

I'd rather not do all the work again.

----------


## stevoh741

> I'd rather not do all the work again.

  Then use builders bog and you wont have to.

----------


## d00biez

LOL 
thoroughly entertaining read! thanks guys

----------


## Master Splinter

> Then use builders bog and you wont have to.

  Let me know when you start living in the real world...or invite me to the launch of your bog + timber yacht.

----------


## stevoh741

look mate, I was just trying to help they guy out - bog has worked fine for me for many years. That is fine that you have no life and can spend hours researching every kind of filler and post to the nth degree every little detail but the purpose is to help people out here and not to bag out other people. I'm fine with a difference of opinion but try using "IMO" rather than flatly bagging out someone else's posting. If you have a problem with me sure send a private message and learn quickly how uncouth and berating I can be - but there is a time and a place for everything and a public forum like this isn't the place. People come here to give and recieve advice then make up their own minds as to which advice they should follow. So *"IMO"* you may think you are God's gift to mankind but show a little compassion to others and treat other posters with respect - even if you don't agree with their posts.

----------


## d00biez

i declare this bout a draw!  :2thumbsup:

----------


## watson

:Spyme:

----------


## stevoh741

> i declare this bout a draw!

  Is that in your opinion? LOL, I'm done mate - got better things to do  :Biggrin:

----------


## Godzilla73

> Is that in your opinion? LOL, I'm done mate - got better things to do

  You gotta start building that ocean going wardrobe?  :Boat:   :Biggrin:

----------


## Master Splinter

In my opinion, while having a life consisting of three kids and a cat that thinks the carpet should be somewhat vomit-coloured, I have no shed at the moment, (unless you count the top of a recycling bin located against a bush full of mosquitoes as a workbench) so this is my ersatz shed playtime. 
And yes, even by my opinion I write longish, researched answers because I'm currently employed as a professional writer and doin' some research comes with job description, so I'm in the habit.  I also assert that I'm a welder by trade, but I have also spent time making fibreglass moulds and parts, as well as doing custom-fit installs of car subwoofers where the enclosures are made from MDF and polyester-doped cloth.  (Yes, those doof-doof sort of cars) 
To give yet another unverifiable but claimed as fact assertion, my first experience with polyester bog was at about age 12, when I was trying to build a wrist-tendon activated mechanism that would flick the trigger on an up-sleeve mounted rubber band gun.  It was at this time I learnt what 'exothermic setting reaction' meant, especially when applied to one's wrist. I also learnt that paper clips are not all that good for trigger linkages when you are expecting them to open those really good clothes pegs from Coles. 
Since that time, in a string of yet more unverifiable assertions, the brands of bog I have used include Plasti-bond, Turbo Builder's Bog, whatever brand the local TAFE used on their car spraypainting course, whatever brand used to be sold in the spraypainting shop in the RSL Arcade in Queanbeyan, K&H Polyester Filler, K&H Metal Reinforced Filler and that stuff in the (green?) tins at Bunnies.  
In my opinion, when people are posting on an internet forum without providing some sort of 'claim of credibility' as to a statement they are making - such as 'in my 20 years of working as an electrician I have never seen blah blah blah' or 'I spent 15 years as design engineer for Northrop-Grumman analysing corrosion related fatigue failure on (plane-y things) and rust never...' adding a disclaimer like IMO is redundant - it's obvious (in my opinion) that the content is an (possibly totally uninformed) opinion.   
/sore point IMO rant/  It's like people who write resumes with sentences like "It is my belief that I am an effective people manager and can lead a team successfully...." Of course it's a belief if they don't provide any evidence to demonstrate their ability!!! /end sore point IMO rant/. 
I was concerned (my concern is another unverifiable assertion) by the following words in the original post:
"very heavy"
"double height"
"chipboard"
"inexperienced older person" 
It's my opinion that if you've got words like that strung together, you want to provide the dude with as much of a safety margin as possible.  You've got the risk of the repair failing, injury risks in manhandling the thing into a workable position and back again, and the risk of overstressing the repair (or the other cabriole legs) when manoeuvring the thing out of/back into position. 
Now, from my unverifiable - but I feel none the less valuable - experience of years of poking around the broken furniture at the recycling shops at the local dumps, one of the most common failures after 'it got wet and turned to wheatabix'  in anything with chipboard is failure of the chipboard around fasteners - either screws pulling out, or entire sections of board delaminating around those metal insert things. 
If the load was sufficient to rip a chunk of chipboard out, I think a repair really needs to  to use a material with similar or greater bonding ability than the urea-formaldehyde resin used in the manufacture of chipboard. 
But I do acknowledge your repeated use of 'IMO' in your original comment where you offer your (naturally heavily caveated) opinion of '_I wouldn't use anything else_' and I will strive to learn from your example.   
If you are offended I do apologise, and I can only say by way of explanation that I have a (journalistic) tendency to write 'snappy' first paras that are based more on sounding hip and cool than level headed presentation of the facts. (sadly, its what editors want these days so you get in the habit) 
I also appreciate the way that you recognise that people can have opinions and experiences different to yours, so you provided a number of informative links demonstrating and reinforcing your position.  
The additional resource material on how to use bog that you dug up, and those possible alternatives (some including interesting 16th century Indian architecture and its relationship to chipboard) were all eye openers, and the way you consistently went for the ball, not the person in your response to my admittedly over-the-top and shoulda-been-clearly-marked-as-opinion-just-like-yours-was posting. 
Sincerely
MS. 
(Note that this post is made at 2.20am, so I either have no life, or it's just a tad too warm here to go to sleep!)

----------


## stevoh741

lol  :2thumbsup:

----------

