Rescued from the Rainy Roadside

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in gorm main this is a nice little chest of drawers or what I hope will be a nice little chest of drawers this piece was found by the side of the road in the rain this piece is I'm going to say it's from about 8 1830 it's late Sheran uh although it doesn't look like what we would traditionally call a Sheran piece of furniture but you can see the transition here from uh Sheran to American Empire uh especially with the book match flame figured mahogany and it's missing its legs we'll have to make new legs see what we can get out of it there's plenty of veneer missing the the banding along the edge edges you can see that the veneer on the drawer fronts is really bad uh you know it's dried out it's cracked lifted all over but at least it's uh all here here you can see how bad the sper on the drawer front is and although 1830 was the time when they started manufacturing pieces of furniture there's lots of evidence of of the hand workk here you can see that the bottoms have been hand planed with a scr plane hand cut doveet Tails this drawer Bottom's great they were using up what otherwise would have been unusable wood for this drawer bottom this bottom of the piece uh gives us some Clues as to what was going on here it seems like the legs may have been uh forcibly removed I feel pretty certain there was a large block of wood here probably came right up to the bottom and that block was drilled through to accept the Dow from a turned leg I think the back legs were turned also I'd love for these drawers to come apart make it better much better to work on the toss but they don't they don't seem loose I may try it anyway I think they'll come apart I would have been surprised if they had not first uh take the bottom out the nails are cut Nails looking at the heads I'm going to guess these heads are Machin made and that's the right time period for this cabinet there's still finish on these drawer fronts but um where the veneer is so bad along the figure I'm afraid to try to wash the finish off you can see it better on this this is the second drawer but you can see how delicate the uh and brittle the veneer is on this one a lot better so uh what I'm going to do is remove the lock and the excussion I'm going to warm up the surface with the heat gun I've done this for about 5 minutes now just going slowly it's amazing how quickly the wood becomes flexible with just a little heat I'm using old old brown glue premixed hide glue and it's well heated up and this heat and moisture will also help soften this veneer help soften the old glue you know I hope it penetrates and seals this up okay let's see what we got this is excellent it's uh very very flat everything okay I'm going to give the other uh drawer fronts the same treatment while I'm waiting for that glue to try I flipped the case forward taking the back off they are both Original Nails and wire Nails it's a typical construction for this period as far as joinery goes uh you know of course the drawers are doveet tailed together then there's Doos cut to the side to support the drawer Runner after that it's just glue blocks and Nails even the front rails don't appear to have any joinery they're just sitting on a glue block maybe that tells us something about uh the period when this was made uh it may or may not have been made in a factory per se but definitely in a shop where they were beginning to see the value in uh ramping up production a bit I'm definitely not going to take this apart I'm going to glue as needed but I think it's time to address the issue of the feet Each corner shows evidence of a large block and Each corner shows evidence that these blocks were drilled to accept a turning I always refer to this book first I've turned to the section on American chest of drawers and you can see there's a lot of them these this book really only goes up to about 1830 with this furniture as is most of the books I have but you can see some similar pieces four drawers with simple legs another simple piece note the turn leg they're saying this is like 1820 at the same time they call it Federal I'll often check out nutting's Furniture treasury once again his book stops about 1830 but here's the 1830 chest of drawers uh with a very nice paint job but I'm only interested in looking at these legs on the opposite page nutting rips into all furniture made after 1830 basically saying it's all crap uh he kind of softens it a little bit by admitting that not everyone can own museum quality antiques that's why any scholar or a serious Furniture collector would look at a piece like this and say that it's worth and um based on its most recent transaction history uh it's kind of hard to argue so what I was seeing in those two books got me to thinking that maybe I was shooting too early for this piece of furniture so I have this book on Victorian here's a similar form crotch mahogany veneer nice big turn legs these chests are a different form obviously but there's the leg I'm thinking of I'm going to get my Big Blocks glued in here and then uh start working on the legs [Music] for these Big Blocks that will uh support the legs I'm using this uh antique bed rail probably about the same age as the uh chest [Music] itself [Music] okay I'm about to uh glue my blocks in here but for the final fitting I'm going to use clamps and pull this whole case together you can see this space here you can see that there's no joint here the only thing that ever held us together was that nail you can see so back to the feet after looking at all my uh anything I could find in my books showing these short turned feet I came up with my own design most similar to this foot here I wanted to make it I wanted to limit it to 6 in maybe this could be a little fatter right here I'll decide as I'm turning I got a nice piece of wood here this is a bed rail from a 200-year old rope bed uh we made new rails for that bed and uh it'll be perfect to use for this job okay I've got the legs on all turned but before I go about installing them I want to get started on gluing down uh some of the veneer I was surprised to find that the sides were veneered okay I think I've got a clamping Arrangement set up uh it's really cold outside it's cold in the shop today I'm going to spend about 5 minutes heating this up as much as I can with the heat gun getting ready to do this veneer patch I decided to take a look at the wood here I was a sort of assuming all along it was mahogany but in fact it's a walnut okay okay I've got some patches to do on the edge of the top let's figure out what that veneer is this is a acetone yeah I'm going to I'm going to say this is Walnut also I should glue this up before I get too involved in the edge veneer luckily I've got some nice uh old Walnut here that came off some job I don't know I don't remember the piece you can see the beautiful light color but the the other side doesn't look substantially different than new Walnut but it is lighter which is important for [Music] the so uh what I'm doing here is I'm going to get all the uh areas that need a patch ready all in the front of this cabinet and I'll then I'll glue them all down at the same time okay I feel like I'm ready to start gluing down to the near I've repaired any area that needed it this area on the top was really chewed up but I was able to use wood putty to smooth it out and build it up this area on the top was really cheap chewed up where the lock had hit the top a lot of times really dug it out in areas like this where the drawer Runners had worn deep grooves into the rail I built it up with epoxy putty I think I'm finished all the veneer repairs this kind of shows how many there were and also there's some on the sides too so I've got to remove all the tape of course and then I'm going to fill all these little chips uh with fam wood and then I'll sand in the mean time I uh have off camera I've been gluing up the drawers [Applause] so I'm starting to do some sanding now there's there's very little finish on this uh I'm going to go over it just lightly with 100 to get the finish off and then I'm primarily going to sand with the 150 and 220 with the drawer fronts uh slightly different routine they've still got a fair amount of finish on them and of course the glue that I used over them I'm cleaning them off first with uh alcohol and I think that I won't have to sand these with 100 I may be able to go straight to the 150 I'm going to try uh just sanding with 150 by hand you know I realized uh pretty quickly that the 150 by hand just wasn't going to cut it uh it's too uneven and especially in areas that repair work I've uh switched to sanding with 100 grit and using a small [Music] block I don't like sanding with 100 but I really needed to in this case but by sanding by hand with this block I'm able to control it and uh just sand as much as necessary till I get to the point where I can switch back to 150 and on a job like this you're always going to find more loose veneer if you've been watching my videos you know I don't like sanding things any more than absolutely necessary and sometimes it is necessary when things are so badly damaged as this piece but the nice thing is sanding carefully by hand and then taking it all the way up to 220 and watching this maner come to life is kind of amazing I've got quite a few uh places where I use putty I want to touch up before the first coat I'm using a mohawk Ultra stain it's a d stain medium Walnut and I've thinned out at least 50/50 with alcohol um I'm preparing to seal these drawers with shellac now a word about sealer you don't ever need to seal anything it's just a choice that a finisher might make I like this uh this what they calls Universal sanding sealer 100% wax fee waxfree shellac is a really good product shellac is very fast drying so the solvent Stone penetrate much and uh draw out the contaminants and it flashes off quickly so it's felt that it can seal in some of those contaminants I'm using shellak I mixed from Flakes and the reason I'm using it on this piece uh as a sealer is to I don't want the piece to be real dark and I'm adding this is very yellow shellac you can see the flakes here and here it is mixed in alcohol I'll use water loocks tongue oil varnish for the top coats and you can see that that's a much darker amber color and another reason for the shellac is that I also am going to finish uh the drawer boxes themselves uh this dress will be used for clothing I want the inside of the drawers to be nice and clean I'm going to spray the shellac shellac D really fast and to do these drawers it's just better uh but I'll brush the varnish I'm using 750 mL of very hot tap water and about 60 G of eolic acid all right I've uh I've let this dry overnight and now I want to give it a good rinsing with lots of clear cold water I've got the case all sanded now and of course I still have to install the feet and uh we haven't talked about the top but uh when I was sanding the wood looks a little to me so I'm going to give the whole case of treatment of oxalic acid uh that'll lighten it up and be sure that we're looking at the natural color and not Darkness caused by uh water damage okay the uh case looks good you know this whole time I've been working on this piece I keep looking at this top there's something about it the top has all always looked like just this really lousy piece of pine but there was something about the grain that was bothering me I've seen lots of uh American Empire pieces that have tops solidwood tops that are pine or cherry or Birch or Maple stained to look like mahogany so it's not unusual really to have this Pine Top but this is in particular bad shape I began to realize that what I was looking at here was not grain not wood grain but in fact paint and that this is this top was uh false grained to resemble the Walnut and it looks good and it actually looks like the Walnut there are areas where the Finish appears to be worn off and you are looking at the grain of the wood so I really like the top and I'm very happy to keep this piece as original as possible and I'm just going to give it a a coat of shellac along with the rest of the piece and then I'm going to Varnish it okay now uh for the feet I turned these tenons to be about 5/8 diameter that's about 16 mm and I took a block of wood drilled the same size hole took a compass made a circle same diameters this then I can line these edges up with the edge of the cabinet clamp the block into place and I can drill [Music] I'm still unsure about the design of these legs but um I'm going to keep going for now we'll get them on and see what it looks like I think I'm uh liking the feet okay I'm going have to get used to them I'm taping off my new piece of vineer uh we'll talk about this soon just as with the drawers I'm going to give the case and the top a coat of shellac okay the shellac is dried over I kept the heat up what I'll do now is I'm going to sand the shellac with 320 and give it another coat of varnish uh after I sand the shellock I'm going to do all the touch-ups that are necessary and in fact I'm going to I'm actually going to start by staining my patch down here so here's the story on this patch this is the original veneer that was here in this area and I noticed that the grain you know seemed to have this upward pattern which goes with the grain on either side of it it was sweeping up like that you can kind of tell looking at the back of it can see the grain going like that so I replaced it with this Peach which is beautiful it turned out to be kind of light and I was waiting to see what this color was before I stained this this Mohawk Ultra stain medium Walnut which is a die stain has been working well for me on this piece doing the touchup so I'll use it okay I'm uh ready to brush a coat of the tongue oil varnish on the case and drawer front now I sprayed the shellac but I'm brushing the varnish I sprayed the shellac because I wanted a nice light even coat and also because this cabinet's going to be holding clothing I also shellack the inside of the drawer boxes you could spray the varnish too but when you spray coats like that they'd have to be light coats because it's so slow drying uh as you can see here on the drawer front it it leaves this this is Shellac but it leaves a texture it's kind of dramatically shown here and you sand that away but the brushing is a whole different look you put on more finish and it levels off completely differently [Music] for wow okay great it's uh dried overnight uh everything's dried beautifully uh I'm kind of hoping it might just need one more coat so uh what I'll do is I'm going to go over it real very quickly with 320 and a scotch Sprite pad with each coat the the depth of the color and the complexity of the color increases the wood I used for these legs was from a mid 19th century Cherry bed rail and it is a absolutely beautiful color and matches the Chester drawers perfectly wow everything looks really good a nice uh low luster I didn't want to make this thing look too fancy and so I'm just going to go over it uh kind of quickly really with the Howard's feeding wax polish and four o steel wool just uh smooth it out a little bit it's got just little knits and I will assemble it these are the same nails that came out of there I can't put them back in the same hole though because the the drawer bottoms had shrunk and cracked I glued them back together and now they're narrower than they used to be but I'll angle a screw in a slight angle right there and grab that back this is the type of uh cut nail used after 1810 remember that every one of these Corners the wood is worn away the veneer is broken I've repaired them but now what I like to do is I like to take a very flat steel thumb tack and put it right here that's got to be the coolest drawer bottom ever well there you have it a really nice uh 19th century chest of drawers uh when I first saw it I thought it was American Empire because of this figure very early American Empire but uh it's Walnut it's got these rounded Corners uh that may indicate a little bit later I'll just say 1830 to 1850 uh it needed a lot of work I think it looks pretty good now I know I know people are going to say I ruined the value of an antique by refinishing it and uh well I guess the question is what is the value of this piece of furniture well luckily we've got some hard data on the most recent transaction I've got about 50 hours in this project I use table saw the L and these hand tools and materials

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 407,953

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

Id: AONWR04gmNo

Length: 50min 59sec (3059 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024