Loose BC cabinet

[Jwolter]

Aside from a complete teardown, does anyone have any tips/tricks for tightening this old girl up?

[PGR]

need more details before any recommendations or suggestions.

[skydawg]

Titebond and clamps.

[Bobmann]

Aside from a complete teardown, does anyone have any tips/tricks for tightening this old girl up?

Loose legs are pretty common.
Rear legs are easier to fix than the front.
Removing all the legs to glue behind them is not an easy task, as all 4 must be removed at the same time and sometimes this is tricky.
This is what the legs look like behind. As you can see it is not a simple flat joint, there is a key in the middle of the joint.

The rear can sometimes be fixed by simply tightening the screws.
More often than not however, the screw head is stripped or the screw is corroded. In that case, I have removed the screws and drilled the hole larger for a 1/4" hex head lag bolt. These can be tightened down pretty agressively.
CAUTION: screw length is critical. Match the new screw exactly; the length of the lag screw measured from under the head should be the same as the overall length of the flat head screw you remove.
Also be careful to not go too deep with the drill...you will end up with a hole in the side of your cabinet.
If you cannot get the screws out, you can still drill new holes and install the lag bolts.
If you can move the legs slightly when the screws are out and get some glue behind the leg that would be a bonus.

Front legs are a little more of a challenge, as the leg screws are hidden by a piece of wood.
Here the wood piece has been removed, and I have already installed lag bolts. In this case the front rail is already off, but for another reason. It is not necessary to remove the front rail.
Sometimes that piece of wood will pop off easily, sometimes it is pretty stubborn and you may not want to run the risk of damaging anything by removing it.
Because of the joint design, the pood must be pulled straight out towards the center of the cabinet (left or right as you are standing in front of it) and there are usually nails that want to prevent this from happening.

There is another option to secure the front legs, but this option is VERY permanent.
I have made a pocket around the leg and filled it with epoxy. I maade a "dam" of soft foam seen here and then used modeling clay to plug any holes on the bottom, then filled it with the epoxy. You can get epoxy at most hardware stores or woodworker supply stores; it is sold by the pint or quart.
Again, this is a very permanent repair, but then again how often do you think you will want to remove the legs?
You will also see a couple of screw heads that were needed to eliminate movement between that big block of plywood that the TG hangs from and the front. This particular cabinet was really loose everywhere.

Bob

[Jwolter]

Bob....that's exactly the type of information I need. Thank you so much. My front pockets are already sprung open, so this should work. Thanks again!

[Jwolter]

Here's a picture I had saved on my phone. You can see the front pockets separating if you zoom in.