Repairing and Restoring an Antique Settee - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in gorn Maine this is a really nice settee as soon as I saw it I could see that it was old went through my books and studying these feet these Triffids feet it really seems like it's Queen Anne and it could be a period piece from the mid 18th century I'll know better when we remove this upholstery and have a good look at it the main reason it came in was to have the back repaired and you can see where it's got some worm damage wood rot there's a bunch of it all over here you can see it's been repaired plenty of times in the past here's some kind of putty smeared over here but you can see there's a nail straight through this joint in the past the back of it pretty rough there's all kinds of different things going on some weird breaks here and because it's loose it's especially loose in this particular back joint the only way to really repair that is remove the upholstery and although the upholstery isn't bad it's a little bit lumpy and needs to be redone anyway so I'll be able to repair the back reglue the frame and then we'll restore the finish some way the city's back from the upholster has stripped off all of the upholstery luckily the attacking strips aren't bad at all there's a few mysteries about this piece still unresolved some of these elements look really old but looking at the inside of this what is so smooth it doesn't look that awful so I'm not sure but I need to take it apart and I think I'll start with the arms I can see that there's two screws here at the base of each arm support start by removing now these back joints are really loose so do those next this is about ready to come loose but I feel a little resistance I'm gonna go check on the the stretcher on the other side so obviously I've got you know this end is broken and loose this ends very loose this joints a little loose this one seems tight I'm just gonna tap and tap a little bit here and there and then I might try applying some heat to the center one and I see no other pins or nails or valves or pegs or anything holding it together so I'm gonna assume it's glue I've got so many loose points here I really want to take it apart repair these and then put it back together so let's see I'm gonna tap a little while see if I could get something to happen this joint and this joint seem to have plenty of looseness at least I see movement there this one seems really tight I think I'm gonna put some wedges joints and then apply heat to this and hopefully a little tension and then some people this one's pretty much eaten up by bugs before we go any further I better start marking things even though all these pieces seem kind of obvious where they go I'm gonna mark them anyway okay this this back splat seems tight I'm gonna leave it alone this one's too loose when we go it out and then I'll be able to take the solid legs off it's amazing how this joint was holding on so well yet it's totally worm-eaten there's almost nothing that something holding this up right here yeah this uh this is a peg I can see it in the back here to think of penguins all the way through this tenon I'm just gonna have to draw it out I'm gonna start with a quarter inch bit which is smaller than this I'm gonna try to as best I can go right down the center of it so I actually got that bit pretty well down the down the center of that peg now I'm gonna move up to a 5/16 bit all right so now it's all disassembled the next step will be to go over each piece and repair all these tenants I'll start with this leg side support we have a child that came out of there it's really worm-eaten unfortunately the chunk is not the entire piece they'll glue this into place and then want to cut into wood it's so worm-eaten there's so little wood wood contact I think I'm gonna use epoxy to glue that back together okay the next joint is this one it's a tough one it's completely eaten up by worms there's a tenon the bottom of this back splat it goes in here I'll chisel out the mortise and then I'm gonna have to rout out the back of this and add a piece of wood okay the back splat itself as you can see from this one and has a good joint there's no shoulder on the back that the tenon is just part of the back I think I'll mark off exactly where I want to cut there's also a broken off mortise in this end of the crest rail it's got a big old nail through it got a thick nail out just clean out backwards alright that's done now this end let's see this this connects here so that's got to be chiseled out and I got to add to it there now this piece I'm going to epoxy because there's just not enough good wood there to use regular wood glue I'm going to apply some of this relatively thin clear epoxy so it will soak into these pieces first that'll have a thickener and a little bit of color [Applause] so now I've cut the space for the replacement tenants you know the whole time I've been working on this I'm wondering what kind of what it is the exterior of it is the color of and has the grain and everything of walnut you'd swear it's walnut but when you cut into it it's very very white wood I don't know it maybe it's butternut but anyway I have a relatively light colored piece of walnut here and I'm going to use walnut because that will give me the color that I want on the exterior okay that that piece glued on pretty well there is some spots to fill but there's a big piece of wood missing so I've got a new chunk on that I have a piece of a wall that I'm going to use mostly because this is walnut color and the grain looks right now flatness on the stationery belt sander I realized as I was sending this and it really needed to take off that much there's a big void in here I've got a chisel this out for a corresponding tenon so most of that void will get filled by the ten in fact because of this gap and because of all the how this is still worm-eaten I'm gonna use epoxy putty to fill this gap in and use the epoxy putty as an adhesive for this piece okay I've looked this clamp on just for a couple of hours now I'm gonna remove some excess wood that you see spots on you know I'm getting close on shaping this and I but I realized this shape here has to match exactly this corresponding space where this gets glued on so often is shaping it after it's glued up so now I'm going to lay out and cut a mortise post tenon so I'd no sooner started just letting when I my new piece of wood started to split on me so I've glued it back and I've decided to use a doweling jig to drill this out first that'll go back it was tough because the old wood is crumbly but I'll try it on the tenon now not bad it's a little loose side to side it's good front to back it's loose side to side I may add some veneer in there alright so the next step I'm going to lay out the parts and start dry assembling it and adjusting and pairing all those tenants and the joints that I redid so what I'm doing as you can see is I'm gonna put this whole back together the whole back of the settee without glue I'm trying each joint out making sure each joint works the way it needs to work okay I've got this all together dry without glue everything went together fine some of the joints are a little loose so I have some veneer here I might have to insert some veneer on some of these Tenon's and I've got my glue heated up knocking apart and then go for it all right that's pretty good I was a little worried about the working time of the hide glue but it's fine and that's one good thing about practicing assembling something without glue that went pretty smoothly so we'll see what happens tomorrow all right I'm getting ready to glue up the rest of the bench here one thing I wanted to mention was you know when I first saw this I could tell all the carvings were very old I'm no doubt their 18th century but when the upholstery was removed we could see the inside of these rails the rails themselves were not old at all we were very curious about that I could see that this back piece here I don't think was original because there's a center piece that's not in the center this is cut off this piece of wood which is a side rail used to be something else there's a whole mortise here and plus these joints in the back had been pegged but when we took this out there's no hole through this tenon the peg isn't doing anything so there's no doubt that the rails of this piece must have been completely warm eaten and destroyed maybe from tax also and all the side rails have been replaced all right it's great to see this all back together finally so now we cannot work on the finish I still have some putty to do I'm either going to putty or wax some of these joints that didn't come together quite right there's a few other places in the back I may try to tint the putty so I think before I do that I'm gonna experiment a little bit on the finish I'm gonna work on the back of this leg and this time it's like I want to see what this what this wants to be color wise so I'm gonna try just patting the back of this leggings a little bit of alcohol and sort of see what happens here it's pulling off a you know some dirt or something not changing too much which is good I think I'm gonna try be inside the front leg yeah it seems to be a really nice kind of a dark walnut color that's what I wanted to know so now I'll go ahead and I'll do the putty things that I need to do and then I'll start by cleaning the back so I was experimenting with some epoxy putty and I was adding color to it and I was using epoxy putty because if you've seen in my other videos you can you can scrub off the excess with a little bit of water and a great pad you don't have to sand but it quickly became apparent that what he did that they just took it down to the bare wood there's very little finish on here that that finishes kind of a kind word it seems like it's just a lot of dirt or something I think what I got to do is I'm gonna gently clean this whole thing with well soap in Iraq and then I'm gonna pad finish on it and then I'm going to fill all the areas that need to be filled I'll be using either epoxy putty or wax burn and wax stick I'm trying to strike a balance here between you know just scrubbing it all the way down getting rid of all this dirt I want the beauty of the wood to come through but I want to leave some of the dirt to keep it looking old gently a little bit of time okay I think I've cleaned it as much as I dare I'm gonna let this dry overnight all right so let this dry I've nothing to paddy we'll finish on the side rail they even going on to the leg a little bit maybe up here so I can get an idea of the color the product I used to have with is this this is called black French it's made for I guess French polishing you call them I'm going to Pat it on this give me an idea of what the final color will be but I seem to have found a black stick here that's a pretty good color match I think I'm gonna try one of these top Joy's here see how it looks all right I think that that looks pretty good the wax is perfect coloring around this joint there's a little bit of discoloration here and there I may or may not put a little stain on that later but now I'm going to go ahead with my wax stick and wives filling all these boards on the top and anywhere else I think needs okay I filled in everything that I'm going to fill in samsung repair is now I have some raw umber oil stain and I'm gonna try first I'll try it on an area that's not they cleaned some of the finish off but not stand it down that looks good then I'm trying an area they got some so I like the way it colored up this area it kind of blended in it's not making everything even which is great I don't want it to be even I kind of you know don't wanna change this too much now I'm going to try it on this lighter area here alright that looks really good I think I'm gonna just go ahead and keep dipping my rag and go over this whole piece I really like what it does to even the parts that I had not sanded or discolored anyway alright this is passion timing stain it really drives in an hour or so but since it's the end of the day anyway I'm gonna let it dry overnight okay I've got the stain dry overnight so now I'm going to apply a coat of shellac this is slack out of a can and then thinned 1/3 without alcohol there's a little bit thinner you know when the stains rise like this when it flashes off it looks very dull it looks dark and you can't worry about what it looks like at that point you have to what it looked like when it was wet with the stain that's what it's gonna look like when I put the Shalaka all right this is dried overnight it looks good although it's a little still a little start for finish on the back I think I'll give it one more coat but first this area where I have new wood and then where the old wood got sanded a bit that needs a little bit more color first I'm going to braid the area with us and now go over it with some dark walnut dye stain but if it will be thinned out 50/50 with alcohol okay I've looked this dry for about 45 minutes meantime I sanded a great pad the entire piece I'm gonna go over the part where I put this stain with just one brushstroke now I'm gonna go on I'm gonna put the coat on the back spot here in this horizontal position maybe even the legs too so I can get the feet better then I'll stand it up all right we'll let this drive till tomorrow all right this is dried overnight that second coat really did a trick the wood is really sealed well now anyway it looks great except it's awfully shiny so I'm going to see if I can cut that down I put some pumice stone into a shaker here I've got my brush that's cutting it down really nicely so I'm gonna go over the whole thing with the pumice then on the flat areas just puts them on the rag okay so now I'll go over it with the good ole beeswax polish and I'll use a stencil brush that I use just for polished okay this is dried now actually probably for an hour or so and I'm going to take a paper towel and just wipe it off stop it out I should say all right ready to go to the upholsterer all right back from the upholsterer if you remember the settee it was really broken up in this area here but we basically took it apart rebooted the side rails had all been replaced they'd probably probably were wormy and needed to be replaced these elements although appear to me to be very old the carving is just fantastic it looks great it's a nice piece of furniture it looks pretty good you you

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 247,852

Rating: 4.9124804 out of 5

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

Id: qlJPaTuG_-o

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 13 2018