A Client Rained On My Parade

I was feeling pretty good at the end of the day yesterday. I had the first of my four Federal style doors glued up and it looked good ... ready to paint and 'surprisingly rigid'. A very cool and challengingly complex, (IMHO), item. As I was leaving, a local client stopped by with a chair and a bed rail for us to repair. The bed rail was a bed rail but the CHAIR !!! ... well, it's just an amazing and humbling piece of work. Looks like it might be from the 1850's neo classical revival/Biedermeier era ... I'm not sure, but regardless, it's a knockout. It has a nice warm, shiny, French Polish finish so it was impossible to photograph with all the reflections and I was in a hurry to get outside to the fine spring afternoon, but here it is ... The back leg is broken for what looks like the second or third time, but we can splice it back together so it can go back with another one just like it ... Hard to believe the guy lived long enough to finish one, let alone two of them ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

rear right leg is snapped off

close up of the splat inlay

the back

restoring a schwanbeck brothers display case

 i always enjoy a nice restoration project where you make something nice out of something not so nice.  this is an excellent case in point.  i didn't take a 'before' picture, but you can see from the one below that there was some pretty serious mouse damage on some of the rails of the case.  someone must have left a few pies in there when the store closed.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

 the case appears to be from the late 1800's and i give the schwanbeck brothers credit for some good design sense.  the case is entirely held together with screws, no glue, and so, was easy to completely disassemble.

 there was a little groove on the bottom of all four panels that engaged the top lip of the base.  once the panels were assembled on the base and screwed together on the corners, the top was put on like a hat.  screws were added from the top and bottom that went into the edges of the vertical panels and the case was then completely rigid. 

  pattented 1897 ...

the new guy, chris, did most of the work on this one .  sweet little case .. it's headed for the store with the new pizza oven ..

an antique table repair

 it didn't take too long to go from the basket case above to the reenergized table below.  good for another 100 years if my clients can keep the movers away from it.  it was hard for us to imagine quite how it ended up in the shape above, but it looks good now.  we can't figure out exactly how old it is either, not being experts on early factory ?? furniture.  it did definitely have some obviously hand done joinery and a 'bricklaid'  veneered apron, which puts it on the early side, but it also ahd some factory like elements, including the little buttons over the screws holding the aprons on, some slotted brass machine made screws reinforcing the leg joints, yet the top veneer pattern had a hand done feeling to it.  i'd peg it early 20th century, english.  comments?  click the photos to enlarge them ...

 ta dahhhh .. striking piece with a decent, but probably not original shellac finish.

 the breaks in the stretcher were mostly on the long grain and after will stuck them back together with glue and masking tape, i routed in some 3/16ths" maple 'bars' over the repaired breaks to reinforce them.

 i also cleaned and replaced the 4 dowel joints where the stretcher joined the legs.  there were some earlier minor stretcher repairs so it wasn't the first tragedy that befell it ... i don't believe the previous mishaps were as serious as this one though.  will also replaced some broken off pieces on the leg top yesterday and repaired the area where the aprons joined in the bridle joint.  we swabbed on the hide glue today and wriggled the stretcher into place.  no clamps necessary except on the bridle joint.  (almost) good as new.