Export iMessages chat.db from TM backup

For some reason all of the iMessages a trades person sent to me before the beginning of November have disappeared from both my Mac and iPhone.

The trouble is, I may be about to enter into a trade dispute with him for over charging and massive delays with his work in my house and would need all the written evidence I have.

Some time before November (September maybe) I accidentally deleted an iMessage chat so tried restoring my iMessages from my Time Machine backup on my Time Capsule. It made a bit of a mess but I'm sure I did the restore before November.

Regardless, everything should be on my Time Capsule - but I don't really want to try again to restore my iMessages from backup as I'd lose the more recent messages.

There are plenty of discussions on here about solutions and apps for archiving live iMessages, but I can't find anything for how to view/export messages saved in an old chat.db file.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I might pull the archive I need from backed up chat.db files without affecting my current chat.db?

I always update my Mac and iPhone to the latest OS within days or a couple of weeks of the final release coming out. I don't use beta versions.

Thanks in advance 🙂