Making a Mold & Casting New Ball Turnings For a Bench leg

Often times, we come across a piece of furniture that's missing a piece on one of the leg turnings. For most, it's a game changer.  Many people will pass on a good buy at the auction or flea market because of a missing part they figure they have no way of replacing.  In this episode, we will show you how to do exactly that.  The example in this tutorial is a leg turning on a small bench, but the same method will work on a plethora of projects that you may encounter.

The leg we will be repairing belongs to a small bench that came into our Studio for complete restoration. It was  in very rough condition, but had a lot of sentimental value to it's owner. The process we are about to teach you can be used on all types of furniture and has countless applications.

In this tutorial, we will focus on how to reproduce missing leg turnings. On one leg, 8 pieces were missing. Fortunately, we had legs that were complete, so we will use a good leg to cast a mold of the parts we need.

Below: There are "professional" products on the market designed for this purpose, and I often times use them. For this job however, I decided to have some fun and use something available to all of us at the local art supply store.  To make our mold, we will use Air Dry Clay.

Before we begin, grab the Pam out of your kitchen cabinet because you're going to need that a well. The first step is to mist a small amount of Pam on the area of the good leg we are molding.  Next, take some clay and work it over the leg molding.

Once you have pressed it on, continue to work it by pushing inward with your fingers, squeezing it into the crevices and working out any air bubbles.  When done, it will look like it's wearing a cast. Allow the clay to dry overnight.

Once the clay hardens, you can remove it and you have your mold.

For the molding material, we will use Bondo for this project. Mix the Bondo per directions on the label.

Once the Bondo is mixed, you have to work FAST !!  The Bondo sets within a minute or two. Using a small putty knife, press the Bondo into the mold. Once full, tap it down to make sure it fills all of the mold and to work out air bubbles.

Pictured Below: We are now finished with our rough casting and can remove it from the mold (see video below)

In this Video,  I'll show you how to remove the casting we just made from our mold and size

it to fit the leg. We'll then glue it in place. 

In this Video, we'll shape, sand & fine tune our new casting.  

In the picture below, we have removed the castings from the mold I just showed you how to make. These are still a little rough, but we trimmed and shaped them in video #1 and now we they just need some fine tuning.

After shaping the casting (see above videos), it's ready to glue into place (see above videos).

Below:  There will be seams that must to be filled. We'll do that using carpenters wood putty because it's softer and will sand at a faster rate than our casting material.

Once you have applied & smoothed out the wood putty (see video #2 above), it should look something like the picture below.

It's time to sand the castings smooth. This is covered in the above video #2. Once you're finished sanding, the leg would look something like the one pictured below.

This leg repair is now completed and ready for finishing.

The next step is to glue up the bench.

Pictured Below, the bench is re glued and ready for finishing. These two topics are covered in other sections of this website.

Our new casting will not accept stain, so glazing will be necessary. Glazing is covered in other sections of this website.

And at last...the completed leg......and bench!

I hope you found this episode inspiring !!

HAPPY FINISHING