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

The Estey Organ Desk

We don't don't often take on work like this, but we just did a refinish on this 19th century desk for a friend ... The story was intriguing ... It was supposedly made by the owner or son of the owner of the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont ... An amazing 100 plus year old Veront company that made over 520,000 !! reed organs and over 3200 full size pipe organs before it went out of business in 1960. The desk appears to be from about the right mid to late 19th century time frame judging from the look of it. It had a severely distressed, insulted and alligatory shellac finish that was beyond saving which Jim removed with a little (lot) of alcohol and a white Scotchbrite pad ... After some serious sanding, we put a couple coats of dye stain and our typical gloss/gelstain/satin finish ... It now looks like it's ready for another hundred years ... Out the door Friday morning ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
This is in the sanding stage, ready for the first coat of stain ...
The completed desk with the fall front open ...
Trevor made a quick replacement arch top ... the second from the left ... It had a neat detail. The shapes are cut from 1/4' thick lumber, but the back side of the profile is relieved to 1/8" thick which gives the appearance that the wood is half as thick as it is ... clever ....