Antique Repairs and Restorations

Repairs ... We love em ... If they could only talk; then theyd be even more interesting .... This pair of tables came in one at a time with the idea that we only had to put a leg back on one of them and patch a broken corner. However, they came in with a bureau that was a basket case when it arrived and looked like a million bucks when it left .... We fixed and delivered that piece first and when the client saw how her bureau had been transformed, she sent us the mate to the table above with instructions to tune them up and refinish the tops, which had suffered some serious damages over the years. So, as we worked with them, we dreamed up their story ... Who knows? Heres what we think..... Click the pictures to enlarge them as we go ...
Heres the bureau ... When it came to us, it looked like it had been in a barn for quite a while ... The drawer supports had all collapsed and the drawers didnt run, more than half of the base was off, the moldings were flapping ... Backboards were missing ... Will did a good job getting it all back together. It took a few hours, but it was definitely worth doing ... When it left, it looked great. Heres the deal on the tables ...
The builder was a skilled craftsmen. The inlays are nicely done, the veneers on the aprons appear to be hand sawn, and the tops of the pair of tables are pairs of bookmatched boards, 1,2,3 center middle outside ... The boards match .... not an accident .

We opted for scraping rather then stripping ... We find when we strip we alchoices have to do a lot of sanding and that kills some of the handmadeness of the surfaces ... scrapings better in our opinion if you can do it ... The finish was not original and it was thin and flaky and actually shot off the front edge of the scraper as I worked.

After we got the leg back on there were about 10 places on the aprons and drawer faces that needed patching or regluing ... The aprons were bricklaid in about 6 layers and then veneered with the grain vertical . The red arrow shows a leg reinforced with a pair of hinges !! We left them there. They worked and you have to honor the history ...

We patched in a bunch of missing pieces and recolored them to match

Heres an interesting thing .... The legs were all cut at the point where the arrow is and the legs that are below that point on the tables now have a different finish and are held on by short half inch diameter dowels (we know cause they wiggle and we fixed one that was broken off) and in some cases hinges ... It also looks like the detail that is on the legs at one time was also on the aprons and drawer fronts.

One had a broken corner and a rotten spot that needed patching

Luckily I had a piece of crotch walnut with similar figure to make a patch

All in, all done ... and ready for the next 50 years or so ...

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Petersburg Mi How to make fluted trim Part II

Here are the results of my fluted trim setup. As you can see, I made a quicky featherboard. These are worth their weight in gold! The featherboard allows me to run long pieces through, and maintain a good cut with the bit.
Ive got all the fluted cherry cut, and am now moving on to sanding and preping the cherry plywood. I have 8 sheets to do so this is going to take a while, especially since I want to get 8-10 coats of finish on it!

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Ive been working on some custom shelves for a customer that has a pedal car collection.  If you dont know what a pedal car is, here is a picture of some of theirs...

The new shelving is going in a room that was built on to the house specifically for the pedal cars.
For each shelf, we are locating and mounting cast iron pipe flanges directly onto studs and blocking, then cutting 1/2" pipe to thread into the flanges.  Next, we are mounting oak ledger boards to carry the back side of the shelves.  The shelves themselves are 3/4" oak plywood, and they are being wrapped with 1 1/2" solid oak face pieces with a dado on the back side to secure the shelf.  We are finishing it out by covering the pipes with custom solid oak pieces underneath.  Heres a pic of one of the first shelves - of course its 13 in the air...

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The Current Big Thing

When I look at the list of posts for the last two or three weeks, it looks like not much is going on, new projects wise.... A couple repairs, some metalwork, a woodshed and railing for my own home, a new camera .... like I said, not much going on ... Thats because, for the last three or four weeks we have been working on a large project and I, as yet, have not gotten it together to post the details. The design work started around the first of the year as construction was getting underchoice, and the project involves a roomful of paneling, a desk, a vanity and dressing table, two mirrors, the restoration of a pair of antique doors, a bar cabinet .... I think thats it for now. The construction on the addition is coming along and weve been working on the project since the middle of May, hoping to install everything in the next couple of weeks. The paneling post will be a long one and Ill post the other entries as I can make the time to do it.
Click the pictures to enlarge them....
The project as it appeared in early January
A close up of the desk model ... a claro walnut slab with a blackened steel base
The fireplace surround and tv cabinet section of the roomful of walnut paneling.
The recycled chestnut vanity

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Now begins the time consuming task of finishing the built in.  The first step is to fill all cracks and voids, generally with a wood filler or a lightweight spackling compound.  Then, the entire unit gets sanded. In the following pictures, the unit has a coat of Zinsser primer on it.  Due to work load, Ive hired this process out to a good friend and a fine finisher, Bob Plunkett. The most time consuming areas are the small cubbies up on top. After the primer is dry, Bob will resand the unit as needed before coloring. These pictures will give an idea of how Bob is making the unit take on its final appearance...

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Northville MI project finishing the shadowboxing

With the oak out of the kiln, and others jobs settled down, Im now able to start work on the rails and stiles for the storage cabinets.  After running the rough oak through the planer, cutting for lengths, and going through the edge joiner, Ive set up the band saw to make some simple standard cuts.  1/4" cut on all sides will make a nice tenon.  I alchoices cut the tenons first, and then cut the mortises to match each tenon.
Over on the table saw, Ive trimmed the excess off the ends, and end up with my 1/4" tenon. Mortise work comes next.

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Northville MI project finishing the shadowboxing

Posted on 17.47 by zeri

Ive finished the foyer work for now, and heres a few pics of the shadowboxing. Ive started work in the kitchen - the goal is to add some matching endpanels on the bare ends of the cabinets and some surrounding base trim - the last pics are a sample of this work.
And heres a pic of a budding woodworker!

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The Mysteries and Art of Finishing

Posted on 13.31 by zeri

The photo above is from my big Matisse book and it shows 16 of the 22 photos sent by Matisse to Etta Cone, showing states in the development of Large Reclining Nude, 1935. I wish I had photographed the various stages in the finishing of this table. I wouldnt have 22 photos, but Id have a bunch....
For the first 10 years of my career as a furniture maker, I worked mostly in natural woods, cherry, walnut and figured maple, finishing them with clear oil finishes, sometimes with accents of milk paint, slowly developing what I came to think of as my studio style. Most of my customers either lived in Vermont full time or had second homes here and were content with the sort of contemporary or Shaker look that my style evoked. For the next 20 years, some of those clients and others who came my choice asked me to make more formal pieces, often designed to blend in with antiques or family pieces they already owned. I found I enjoyed the new design challenge, making pieces fit with an existing environment. Its never been easy though, this coloring of wood, And, even now that Ive been doing it for a long time, its still a challenge. Just this last week, we struggled somewhat with a table for a Boston client, who, from the start, requested a formal, somewhat shiny finish for his table ...Not too shiny, but just the right shiny.... Shinys tough. If its too perfect, it can look just like an off-the-rack piece from a local furniture store, but with the right shiny combined with our method of handscraping the big flat surfaces, you can get that wonderful, waterlike surface you find most often on really fine antiques .... It takes patience, a willingness to experiment, and sometimes a certain fearlessness that you just know you have to just have at it and things will be fine. Ive stripped a few and thats never fun, but when you get one just right, well, thats really fun ... I tried to write down the process both before I started and after I finished this one, but no matter how hard you try, it wont be exactly the same next time. Make samples, in this case, include the inlays in the samples. For this table we used several coats of diluted Lockwood water based aniline dyes, occasional masking tape on the inlays, some shellac, and after many samples two coats of Minwax brush on fast dry poly, gloss under, semi gloss over, sanded lightly with 1200 and top coated with an oil poly mix. It took, off and on,most of a week. You feel like Matisse, a little ....
Click the photos to enlarge them
The photos below were all taken with the florescent lights on. We werent totally happy until we turned them off and turned on the chandeliers that Jim cleaned and are still hanging in the finish room ... Nobody has florescents lights in their dining room anychoice...
Two of our many varnish samples .. same color on the left, natural cherry on the right
The underside is finished just like the top ... Watertown runners from Moin hardware.
Will, burning in the mark and date
Leg and apron and inlay
The shine under the regular lights
The leaves
Winston Churchill said once Success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm ... Just have at it ...

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How I square rough lumber

Posted on 13.16 by zeri

I need to make another piece of trim for the cherry built in, and thought this would be a good time to show how I square an edge on lumber that still has bark on it. In the pictures below, Ive shown my method.
Ive planed the piece down to my desired thickness. Ive attached a piece of paneling to the top of my rough lumber using small finish nails. This will give me a straight edge to run along the fence of the table saw. Then, Ive set the saw blade height to cut just through the rough lumber. By letting the paneling follow the fence, I end up with a straight edge on the rough lumber. Now I can work with a squared edge. This is my simple method of squaring rough lumber.

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Update on the Front Door

10/1 Home stretch on the door project ... We had to go to the site yesterday to final refit the front door before final priming,coloring and rehanging. The molding miters will need some patch and fill work and Tom of Keefe and Wesner Architects (restoration specialists) turned us on to a product by West Systems called microballoons. You add this sort of mysterious powdery stuff to their epoxy and it makes what they refer to as a fairing compound. Weatherproof, durable, carveable, sandable, paintable .... We made a sample Tuesday and its pretty amazing stuff. More on that later ... Click photos to enlarge them.
The opening with its granite sill
The inside view after refitting ... There was soooo much paint on the jamb edges that the door was thicker than the rabbett in which it fits. Over the years, it seems that the carpenters, when recoloring and adding new hardware, had rehung the door further and further from its original location until when we first fitted it yesterday, it was about 3/16ths pround of its jambs. Luckily, we were able to rerout the jambs in place and now it swings freely, fits flush and doesnt bind ... well add new weatherstripping after its painted and rehung.
From the outside with the new knocker in place
Update 9/22
Trevor has made one continuous patch to cover the historical assortment that has accumulated on the outside ... The new knocker will cover the old knocker holes .... the small patch was a knot that had fallen out ...
And weve laid out the Ball & Ball lockset location )love their stuff). Hell fill the round holes and do another one patch on the inside.
9/19/09
Another project were working on for the painted library house is the front door. Originally, our scope of work included making a new front door similar to the original. We didnt pay too much attention to the old one at first as it had some 1960s or 1970s era lacquered brass hardware and some really thick bad paint. But, when I decided to take the original door to copy it, we started to look at it more closely and decided that, yeah, maybe it was old and well strip it first and see what it looks like. I took it to my friend Alan Tschorn at Chem Clean in Arlington, Vermont and he put it in his dip tank for a soak. When we got it back, it showed some past insults, but it was definitely an old door. Were feeling like it could maybe possibly be the original after removing the moldings that were loosened by the stripping process. The panels are all one piece, not narrow glued up boards. Some are bookmatched (the two horizontal top ones) or obviously from the same board, and all the nails appear to be from the same period and manufacturer. Im actually not familiar with the exact style, but it appears to be an early cut nail, stamped from a sheet possibly by a local Vermonter. Check the nails out below ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
Interior view of the original entrychoice ...
On our first site visit, we took measurements to estimate a price to copy the existing door. This house has beautiful, original, cut granite foundations and note the granite sill detail ... You dont see that often ...
Back from the strippers ... interior view
Exterior view showing clearly the patches that accumulated over the years as hardware and locks were changed ..
The door with all its exterior panel molding removed. To get the first one out we drove the two nails holding the molding through and then pried it up. Once that one was out, the others could be removed with their nails ....
Paint and stripper remained under the hand plane shaped moldings
The nails ... two per strip of molding, 8 per panel, carefully and symmetrically placed by the original maker. Note the square ground nailset for setting the nails through ... Well patch the holes neatly, and make accomodtions for the new Ball and Ball hardware ... Itll be sweet when its repainted and Im sure it will be happy to get back home ....

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