A Worthy Repair

Ok ... Your client has a nice chair ... this one was particularly nice as is a lot of this client's stuff. A while back, we repaired the NICEST, original finish, writing arm Windor I have ever seen. There's one like it in 's book, but it's not as nice. Here's a link to that repair story .. it's a good one and we used the same technique to repair this chair which came to us with it's arm snapped off at the joints.. Our goal is always to create new joints joints with integrity, yet leaves as much as the original wood as possible. Here's one of our best repair tricks .... click the pictures to enlarge them ...

We've excavated the broken tenons by starting with a small hole in the broken part and 'drilling up' with larger bits until we can break away the thin wall of the tenon that's left in the original hole. Then, in this case we sanded the broken arm to a point, leaving the wood on the top sanded just to the point where it broke, as it entered the mortise hole. That left us our original length to go by. Then we turned a short piece of new wood with the proper size tenon on it, stuck it int the hole and swung the arm, with it's new tenon in the front, around and traced the scarf angle onto the new piece sticking out of the back leg mortise, cut it and sanded it to fit. Carefully holding the two pieces aligned, I drilled a 3/16ths" hole for a dowel which kept the scarf joint aligned during gluing and clamping.

Get some pressure on it any way you can. masking tape is good, duct tape is stronger and stretchier, but can pull off an old finish so be careful with it.

This technique can work with almost any broken round tenon on a stetcher or spindle.

The finished chair

j-b weld it

break out the j-b weld .... as they say on the website ... "don't scrap it, j-b weld it", and we did. on tuesday morning, an electrician for one of our clients brought this elaborate wall sconce to us with one of the arms separated from its little ball joint (arrow #1).. it had a plastic coated wire in the pipe so we couldn't weld it normally, even if we could have figured out what kind of metal it was. probably some kind of cast brass. the thin wall curved pipe was originally threaded with fine threads into the little brass ball, but, after, (rumor has it), taking a hit from an indoor football throw, it looked pretty hopeless. click the photos to enlarge them ..

sam instructed us in the fine art of 'jb welding' and we set it up on the bench in the finish room and had at it. the key, according to sam, is to mix up the 'cold weld epoxy', figure out how to put some light pressure on the immobilized pieces and then DON'T TOUCH IT !! for 36 hours or so. it says four to six hours on the package, but hey, what's your hurry? in the top photo above, you can see that we cobbed up some rubber bands, a couple of props to get it on the right angle and then left it until about 11:30 this morning. will touched up the gold paint around 8:00 this morning, and by the time that was dry, it was off to its old home wall ... i'm pretty sure it will be fine ... next time you have some brolen metal parts that won't be subject to torque, stress, or flying footballs, give it a try ... works for us ...

cute little thing

yesterday i fixed a really cute mini bureau for a friend and client ... she's had it for a while and has always wondered if it was a sample or a kid's piece ... who knows ... whatever it is, (i suspect it could possibly be a journeyman project) (scroll down) it's a cool and friendly object ...
closed.. 18.5 high x 21.5 long x 11" deep ... 10 drawers on the top behind the fall flap and 3 regulars in the lower case.
aside from refinishing the top and fall flap, and replacing the bras around the keyhole, the lock was the most troublesome thing .. it was in one of the drawers and had been for 'quite a while' ... mainly, because there was no wood left to attach it to ...
first i routed the recess level, then added some 'prefitted' new mahogany support pieces glued to the freshly routed surfaces ...
after and overnight dry, i remounted the lock to the new blocks with really small (1/2 x 3) brass screws ... can't wait to get my good camera back from the repair place ...
all in, all done ... good to go ... all the scalloped pieces on the top row have drawers attached

a clock case repair

we fixed another clock this week. there was a handwritten note pasted inside the case that said it was "old in 1854 when _________ gave it to my grandfather." i'm waiting to hear from the british clockmaker, who is repairing the works as to his best guess on the date and geographic origin. it's american, with a cherry case with mahogany details, and appears, with the exception of the lock, pretty original. like the last one we fixed in the spring, the weight had fallen and taken the floor with it ... all better now. click the photos to enlarge them ...
we started with the easy stuff, some missing moldings here and there. a brainstorm i had was to do the first couple coats of dye and shellac before gluing them in, which simplified the blending of the finish later on.
this was the most troublesome aspect of this project. it's the front right leg, and it had been nailed through the glue block in several directions. it twisted off easily in my hand, the nails, not so easily. eventually, i worked them out through the hole and repaired the surrounding area and drilled a new, slightly larger hole. i had to make a stacked jig to keep the little foot vertical while i drilled the new hole for the new tenon, which was simple once i worked through the concept phase of it.
viola ...
new bottom from recycled chestnut ...
out the door ... pics with the works when they arrive later this week i think ...

The Chest

Over the past five years or so, we taken on more repairs and restoration of worthy antiques for the folks in our area .... It's great work on a number of levels: it's a break from the routine; it gives us a chance to be heroes by saving or polishing items of, in some cases, extreme sentimental value; it's a quick project rather than something you work on for days or weeks ; and the work is often challenging and thought provoking. We've learned to try to 'do no harm' by doing as little as possible to get things back in shape. Over the last year and a half we have had the good fortune to work with a couple who suffered a pretty serious fire and have learned many techniques for cleaning smoke damaged furniture . The star of this post I have written about before. The client had it for a long time, having chosen it when his late grandmother's possessions were divied up.
Here's the only shot of it I have pre-cleaning ...
Here I'm about to start on the touch up ... We talked to about a million people about this piece ... It's old; as far as we could tell, no one has ever messed with the paintings; it's important to the client ... he got it from his grandmother and, though it's hard to photograph, in person you can clearly see his name (Chinn) and the date 1706, a year his ancestor married and built a large home in Virginia that still stands today. So, is it possible this chest has passed down on the male side of his family for over 300 years???? The client was floored when we found this. One dealer I spoke with felt maybe it was not quite that old....Others were not so sure ... Regardless, it was now an important family piece for sure ...
I have lightened the photo and changed the contrast, but here it is.... there are other writings on two of the other panels, but they are not as easy to translate.
Another view of it ...
After testing a small area of the paint (for about the third or fourth time), with a white paper towel and denatured alcohol, we rub coated the first panel with 'sealcoat', a dewaxed shellac.
That provided a barrier coat and I built and blended on top of that with three colors of latex paint on the same brush at the same time ... I often use this technique when recoloring antique finishes ...
dab it on ... smush it around and redab ... if you go too far, which I did a couple of times on this project, the barrier shellac coat allows you to 'erase' your mistakes by rubbing with alcohol to go back to the beginning ... recoat over the color when you're happy ..
I guess 'blot' is the right word. You kind of pounce it with a smushed up paper towel until it looks right.
The first end panel retouched ... note the difference between the side base and the front ...
Here the front is retouched on the right, but untouched on the left ...
The 'Chinn' end ..
The top looked like it might be a challenge, but we cruised through it to wrap it up ... When I delivered it yesterday, the client said it now looked better than it did before the fire, a high compliment for sure ...

For more information on our work repairing and restoring worthy antiques, see this link here... Or for two of our finest saves ... this link ...

Funky Repair Project

OK .... Daryll and Daryll do 'anything for a buck'. I think that was a line from The Bob Newhart Show, back in he 80's .... 'This is my brother Daryll and this is my other brother Daryll' or something like that and they did anything for a buck. Anyway, I felt kind of like that about halfway through this repair today while all the other stuff was going on in the shop. This project came to me through a designer that I sometimes work with, and, in the end, it came out fine and we had a good time with it. I think it was the grandmother's game table, then the mother cut it off to make it a coffee table and now the daughter wants it to be a game table again. She did a great job finding some legs that matched amazingly well at Matthew Burak's Classic Designs in St. Johnsbury, VT .... We had to cut and paste them a bit, but in the end they look like they were made for the table. The square part on Matthew's leg was exactly the same size as the top of the original leg and the turning details broke so that we could get the table amazingly close to standard height at 30". We had a great time fixing the table and we especially liked the edge and apron design.....Click photos to enlarge ...

Stick these new legs on the bottom of the old ones

Step one .... make a jig to drill straight holes in the cut off legs

Step 2 ...completely disassemble the original legs and aprons and reglue them cause all the joints are loose

Step 3 .... cut the new legs in the right place and put some round tenons on them, mix up

some plastic resin glue and stick them on. Make sure they are STRAIGHT !!

We clamped a jig to the bottoms of them to keep them square and parallel. Tomorrow we'll put a little color on the new parts .... Good to go ...