Repairing an Antique Slant Top Desk - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration and Gorham Maine this is a nice antique desk I believe it's a period piece from the late 18th century obviously it's been refinished they were never this late originally this is either birch or maple and it was probably stained darker maybe we'll find traces of the original finish on the underside it's a nice desk pretty plain inside but it's got a couple of nice details this person has a lot of problems you can see that the foot is broken obviously so we'll get it on us back check all the feet repair or anything and as missing blue blocks these dividers between the drawers these supports are coming loose but the worst thing is over here you can see it the whole side of this cabinet is split I don't know why that occurred there's been a lot of repairs to this in the past maybe we'll get some clues when we take the drawers out put it on us back and have a good look at it's interesting and doesn't look it doesn't look nearly as bad on the inside as it does on the outside luckily this rail is loose I think I can bring this out the drawer runners here look like replacements and I may need to take them out anyway to shorten them a little bit to push this back into place that's why it's protruding a bit I may just replace those the drawer runners up here definitely need to be replaced these lower ones also look like they've been replaced in the past I may you know replace those again start by taking this out these drawer runners now [Music] I'm gonna put some clamps on this see if I can clamp it back into position it doesn't feel like it even wants to go it's interesting I see now we can close up there's brakes all along here very similar break this little board was broken and all up in here too I'm also seeing all kinds of screws here too going into these rails in four places that this needs to get pushed back that way also alright I think that this clamping arrangement is gonna work out fine now I'm gonna use epoxy on this glue up do not have a great glue joint there's a tremendous amount of tension here it's been repaired times before I think we need epoxy I think we need to cure strength of the epoxy to help hold this thing in place now I've added some more thickener to the epoxy to go into this crack because I don't think it's gonna come all the way back together now before I tighten these I'm gonna pull pull it this way I really want to take a peek in here to see if this brought it back all the way yeah it looks level maybe I should even add another clamp okay we'll see what we've got tomorrow well boy anyway it certainly went right back where it belongs I don't even see the crack offhand but of course I've got to get this excess epoxy off of here have a look when I think I think I've done all I can with the chisel now I'm just gonna try to scrub this with a little alcohol and a scotch brite pad so look pretty good when it was wet with the alcohol I'm gonna sand it slightly with some 220 gold and then give it a coat of shellac the aerosol I'm just standing lightly but my goal is to get rid of these little traces of the epoxy that I see here they're coming right off at this point with the paper so I've got to turn this up I've got to get to the inside of the case so I think on my way there I'm gonna try to turn this up turn it upside down so I can do the work on the legs so we knew that this foot was broken off it was been glued before with some kind of strange white glue the other feet though seemed strong even though they're all missing their corner blocks but they've been screwed to the case and screwed to each other in various ways there's lots of screw holes with plugs throughout this I'm not going to do anything about that everything seems strong but I will repair this and add the corner blocks god only knows what this stuff is but at least it seems to be coming off easily here where the glue is on the break it doesn't peel off so easily so I will try a little bit of heat I don't think it'll take much so we even know that white stuff was seen to be coming off okay I finally pulled it all off the truck but I could see that there was some kind of layer of glue or the would seem to be sealed and this miter and I'm using the heat gun back again to the heat gun to warm that up to get it off oh yeah what is this stuff it's okay I've got all these surfaces as clean as I can get them and so I'm gonna try to glue all this up I've cut this board with a slot in it I'm gonna plant the hood here it gives me something to clamp these pieces to I'm using hide glue by the way it's tough it's like them you know gluing these together sticking out into thin air here well I can't possibly fit any more clamps on this leg it's kind of crazy and then when I put this the glue block behind it that will give it a lot of support this looks good for now I'm fitting my corner blocks in these feet you know this piece has a lot of repairs to it done previously I was determined not to start undoing those repairs because most of them seemed secure this leg however I can't even put this blocking it's so misaligned then I'm going to take the heat gun and take this off and redo it [Applause] [Applause] [Music] I'm using hide glue here to do this glue up you know these pieces are you know together in the back they're as good as they get there's still a little bit gap there I'll have to fix but this was a lot easier glue up than the other leg and it's because I wisely glued the corner block in at the same time so now I'll go around and glue these other corner blocks in and that should be up to the feet all the legs seem really strong [Music] [Music] all right well I've got the desk in this position on this side down here where I epoxy that board back together I'm gonna clean that up and get that joint ready to reglue the railing okay I just need to do some show out a little bit of color working slacking on the feet now I'm going to go ahead with the wax and fill those cracks that on the side that I glued up first all right now I just got to get some I've still got a little bit of epoxy on the front of this board here all right we're getting close to being able to glue this rail back in and I'd forgotten I want to I'm gonna put new drawer rocks into this of course so I gotta take this okay I'm ready to turn this back on his feet but I did just remember before I do that I've got a stainless new blocks I put in there I got most of the epoxy I was joint and I I'd seen this though before I still gotta take a little bit more out of here to get this to fit correctly okay well we'll see tomorrow I have the source that of course they got an install the runners first look seems good there's a little gap here there was already a little piece of wood missing you can only bring it together so far here it's tight there where the dovetail is same thing here I'll fill that in with wax and then touch up this area ok I've cut new drawer runners for this drawer but I also noticed this rail was pushed out and it's pretty immediately obvious that the problem is is that this drawer runner is too long when the sides shrink it pushed this rail out so I need to take this tour run around and do the other two they're badly worn so I'll replace those also and cut them shorter so that this graph includes a back in the position I think you can see how badly it's worn here I think it'll be a lot easier if I install these drawer runners with this on this back so today I have a little help to flip it over almost forgot I got to I got a glue this railing before I put the drawer runners in I can't get this any further out than that because it's because it's tight here this is a whole board that runs the whole length it's also tight on the other side so I'm just going to drip some glue down in there I had a clamp ready to clamp it this way also but I don't need it okay to install these I'm gonna put glue only on about two inches or so near the fun of the kind of cabinet and then in the back I'll mail and have some nice old-fashioned cut nails to do that and in theory that will allow the sides to expand and contract and this should stay in place now I still have it installed drawer guides for this top drawer because it's narrower and the drawer guides besides keeping the drawer where it's supposed to be it's a divider between the lid support and the drawer okay I gotta let these clamps on just for a little while I'm anxious to try the drawers out but in the meantime I'll just finish these touch-ups in this area here okay the the area is where I work where the repairs were there pretty good color they're a little bit lighter and so I'm just gonna hit it with a very very light coat of raw umber aerosol time the drawers are in good shape the owner of the desk didn't like these big knobs and they don't look right we took one off and you can see here what the original knob was and the size of it you know I've never seen a slant top desk with knobs on it these does typically have either a handle you know similar like this back plate with a bail or it could be this tight with the bail the owner of this desk said that this desk was from 1820 I don't know how she knew that but I believe it because the knobs on drawers and desks were more in that period so I look through my books and we and we know the size so I was able to find a knob that's from that period this type of knob and so we're gonna replace the wooden ones with these brats okay I've gone over it with my good ol beeswax polish so there you have it this is a nice old desk from about 1820 it's a figured birch been refinished but if you remember just doing repair work the the worst thing about it was this whole side was split apart that back together this leg was broken off I repaired that leg I redid the repairs on this leg added blocks new knobs new drawer runners kind of cut them shorter especially this one so I could push this rail back where it belongs I think it looks pretty good

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 193,032

Keywords: Thomas, Johnson, Antique, Furniture, Restoration, Gorham, Maine, Southern, ME, Greater, Portland, Boston, MA, Newton, Mass

Id: Egpm6nfmh6o

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2019