Reply To: Fixing the secretary desk

How about tilting the whole thing back slightly? You could experiment with adding a small block under the front legs first to see if it works…
If it does, you can take a bit off the back legs.
My guess is it shouldn’t take much then a few degrees of tilt to have the thing not falling open.

Doesn’t get you out of the repair job but it might be an easy fix.

For the repair job I’d go with replacing the torn up areas with hardwood blocks and some descent screws, not conical shaped ones (like most plate screws are) but ones that have most of their screw threads parallel.
Not that I’ve done anything like that yet but it would probably be a more durable fix.

HTH Diego