We’ve got an Arkana tulip table. Nice thing – very second hand and a bit battered but practical and nice to look at.

However there isn’t much structure in it – the skin is the only thing holding it together and that is just plastic – no fibreglass reinforcement. This obviously works – the table has lasted around 50 years – but in the summer the base cracked. When this happens it isn’t obvious – there is a loud noise but the table remains mostly stable and it was a while before we found the crack.

First stage was to sand off all the paint. Very very dull. Once that was done I cut the crack into a V shape and epoxied it up – partly to improve the structure but mostly to avoid failure when moving the base around during the next stage.

I then covered the base in strips of fibreglass cloth and epoxy.

After a couple of layers of fibreglass I sanded it off, then applied epoxy plus low density filler. This is really easy to sand which is a major bonus when you’ve got a lot of sanding to do.

After a couple of cycles of filling and sanding I’d had enough so put some paint on. I’ve still got some more coats of paint to go on (the paint isn’t great) but it now looks like this:

Hopefully it will be strong enough to last a good few more years.

The chairs are suffering the same problem – old age plus lack of structure – and the same method won’t work for them – the shape is much more complex and I’ve had enough of sanding for now. I’ll need to think of something else – hopefully some kind of internal reinforcement.