Taking old furniture to bits.

I think I can see nails (and glue?!)

Looks like a candidate for "argh, my eye"

There's clearly still pins in there. Is this a trick question?

Also, are you intending to put it back together again at some point? 😁

It's nailed & glued. Just smash it with a hammer.

Have at it with a hammer

I saw the nails, and thought, 'nah, that's way too obvious and I don't want to look an idiot for saying so'. Thank gawd I'm not as stupid as I thought I was for a minute.

The perspective of the photo doesn't help- the upright finishes flush with cut out in the cross piece and the part with the nails closest to us has a cut out at the same level. Hard to see if the nails are above or below the cut-out line.

The nails are very small , I can't see them being over 2 inches long.

Need more photos to give a better idea of what you're dealing with.

The nails are very small , I can’t see them being over 2 inches long.

But surely they are nailed *into* something?

If you've a chisel(preferably and older less critical chisel) try placing it to force off the blocks. It's not unusual for older glue to crack and if it does you might be able to lever it off, rather than bashing at it with a hammer damaging parts you might want to save.

Small nails or pins are sometimes there just to give it some mechanical support while the glue goes off, and don't really do anything other than that, so possibly won't be very long and just catch.

The nails are very small , I can’t see them being over 2 inches long.

They’re the two little shiny round things in the middle of each end bevelled bit facing towards the viewer - honestly difficult to miss, really. And there’s definitely excess adhesive along the top edge between the two pieces.

Stop.

We need to see the other side, but it looks like those two nails are just holding that block on (as well as adhesive) because the leg thing on the other side is lower then them seemingly.
The leg top seems to be the level of the notch cut into the rail.

Is it an extending table or suttin?
The block looks like it's just additional support for a sliding component(dovetail shaped) perhaps and so probably doesn't need to come off anyway.

There could be nails or screws on the other side holding the leg to the rail but we will probably never know.

I would drop a grand piano onto it from a second storey window then get a furniture maker to make you a new one that's not held together with nails and comes with full dismantling instructions.

Here’s the other picture that disappeared.

It”s now gone up into the spare room in one piece. We had hoped to store it in the loft. Not a problem as Mrs Zips mum doesn’t venture upstairs anymore,

Its the brown bit that needs removing.

Its the brown bit that needs removing.

everything in the photo is brown 🙂

maybe if you removed the screws.....

Remove screws, tap with hammer

everything in the photo is brown

I assumed he was talking about the rug. It's hideous. The carpet's pretty awful too, but at least it's not brown.