Restoring a Broken Desk - Shellac Finish and Wood Repair by Fixing Furniture

welcome back to our Workshop today I'm working on this roll top desk that came out of an old farmhouse I can visually see there are a few things wrong with it the roll top isn't opening all the way the pedestal on the left here is coming apart and I've got this loose piece and the finish on the top is really really worn now I'm not going to strip and refinish this piece that would make it look new what I'm going to do is preserve the history but clean up the finish and get it set in the way it's going to last for decades to come now working on a piece like this I can only see what's going on on the outside not the inside so there might be a little bit more work here stick with me I'll show you how it's done as a furniture repair business we're opening the doors to our Workshop to show you the tools and techniques to repair furniture the front rail here you can see this has been broken off we give you tips to make your repair projects easier let's get into the workshop and start fixing furniture when I first saw this desk I was really impressed with it it's hard to appreciate in my small Workshop here so when the customer dropped it off outside I took some videos so you can see it from all angles you can see here at the back this is where the pedestal is coming apart this is the major issue the customer asked me to fix the first part I'm going to work on is this pedestal because I know there are so many issues with it so I just need to unscrew the top and then separate it from the pedestals as I work on the underside you can see here there's a crackled finish and this is an aged finish I'm not seeing this on the outside so I think at one point it had a new coat of finish put on it when I'm restoring Furniture I find every piece has a little bit of a story to tell and this top was held on by all these screws and there are about five different sizes of screws in here which means this wasn't the original set of screws that were used to put this on so someone's been working on this desk at least once before me I can now take the top off [Applause] close that up nice it's hung up on something it looks like there's a pig here going through the top so I'm gonna have to lift it up higher I'll take a closer look here this is the apron and then this is where I was taking the screws out and they rotate perfect so this allows for wood movement that's what we want and what is this oh it's mechanical oh I wonder if that is a drawer lock let's check this out yeah these won't open let me put something heavy on here it's like Indiana Jones Style and let's see what happens haha well that's cool so this must somehow get triggered by the roll top getting opened and pushed down here well that's pretty cool I'm going to turn my attention to this pedestal over here that's falling apart and get it back together and I'll have to make sure I check out all the mechanics and make sure I get them working too now if you can't tell I've got a relatively small Workshop I'm in a single car garage and someday I'll make a video about working in a small space I'm going to take the apron off of this [Music] I'll move this out of the way on some padding and then get the pedestal up in the workbench now rather than lift this whole piece up on the workbench I'm just going to take it apart in pieces oh that's interesting so this slides out here and it doesn't come out any further because there's a peg here so interesting design I'm going to take each of these oops I just noticed that as I'm pulling this out this mechanical piece is coming out so I have to lift this up to get the drawers out as I pull out each drawer I need to label them so I'm going to label this left one and you can see some Marks here on the drawer kids were writing in here this is an heirloom and these actually have meaning to the owner so another example of why you don't want to strip and refinish things some good memories there and as I pull this out I'll just check and make sure all the joinery on the drawers is tight here's a loose joint so I'll have to glue that when I put this back together again oh this drawers come right apart I'll have to get that back in the slot to see if I can get this drawer out with all the drawers out you can now see that whole side is separated there and there's some separation down here as well this looks like it should be lined up here so it all needs to be re-glued I've also got this extra piece that came out and it looks like at the front there's a matching piece and that post looks like it was intended for a foot of some sort so I'm guessing this needs to be glued in at the bottom over there as well get these Brewers set aside here we'll get the patient up on the operating table foreign ery at the front is solid so back here it's just a matter of gently pulling it apart and then we'll glue the pieces back in again when you look at the back here you can see just how open this is so this is something called frame and panel this is the panel on the inside and this is the frame the panel never gets glued because the panel needs to move with wood movement and that's why this is constructed this way there's one two three four rails on this whole thing and it allows these three panels here to move with the seasonal wood movement so this area is where I need glue no glue here this needs to be glued this needs to be glued on this side of the desk this is the inside of the desk you can see this panel here has also separated so it's coming apart and on the other side the panel is also coming apart but there's a bit more of a problem there's a piece of wood missing right here so it's split out and I don't have a piece so I'm going to have to do some repair work here maybe the best thing to do is take this hole back off and repair that and put it back together I wonder if I can gently pull this apart without making a mess foreign foreign oh I see part of the problem so here the panel is separated and this split off on the other side we're missing a whole piece so this is loose put this joint up here doesn't seem to have any movement to it so I use vinegar for this just squeeze some vinegar into the joint let it sit for about five minutes and the acid and the vinegar breaks down the protein in the glue another way you can try to unglue this is to use a heat gun but I prefer not to risk damaging the Finish or the wood household vinegar works really well I'm going to get it with Mallet let's see if we can get this apart now as I move the bottom out should be able to loosen it up there we go you can now see this piece of wood that's missing so this is a dado that's in this and this part here is starting to split off but I can glue that back on over here it's broken off and it actually looks like it's been broken off so long that someone's put a coat of stain on here so there's the stain board there's the unstain board I'd expect this break here to be the same color as this raw wood and it's not so more evidence that someone else has done some work on this in here I need to make sure I've got a really straight line if I chiseled this out and had a bit of variation in here I wouldn't get a strong glue joint so the best way to get a straight line is on the table saw now I need to cut just a quarter of an inch in the depth here and when you're not cutting all the way through you can't have a blade guard on so the first step is to take that off foreign foreign [Applause] okay so now I can set the depth of the blade and now to cut this part out here I'll need to make sure I've got a couple things set the first is I need to know where my teeth are biting so I need a line out here and that way I know when to stop the cutting on my piece here so I'm going to take out this part here I'm just going to draw a line here to approximate that now to do that I'm just going to take this and extend it out move the fence over and set the fence to the right width and then as I push through here this line here and this line here when they line up I'm going to pull this back and I'll have a nice straight line here [Music] foreign so the cut line here it's looking nice and straight and what I'm going to do now is use a handsaw to cut out this portion here which is a little bit and be ready to fit a new piece in if I cut this off Square it's going to be easier for the eye to see that so if I cut it on an angle here it's easier to disguise the repair thank you yeah I love the accuracy of cut I can get with this dazuki saw this is made by gyokujo and I've got a couple more of their saws here in my cabinet I'll leave a link in the video description for this now I'll quickly break out the edge here just so I can see where I need the Chisel and then I'll work my way from the point down to the lower edges here's my Notch and this is an oak board so I need to match it with Oak White Oak to White Oak this is going to get the best match in here but you can see here there's a knot in this board and the grain comes up and goes around here the straight grain here is what I'm looking for so what I'm going to do is turn this around and I'll show you a post that grain is on a bit of an angle this way and I want something straight green so this isn't going to work the green is fairly spaced out here but here it's much tighter together the problem on this side is you'll notice there's a bit of a reflect through here it's kind of hard to see that but this is what you see in quarters on Oak and the way this board has been cut you're starting to get into Quarters on Oak over here so what I'm going to do is cut a strip off of here the face over here will not be quarter-sawn and that will give me the piece I'm looking for foreign with the angle cut and just double check the fit and we've got a nice tight fit there we're ready for the glue up just put this in the Vise to make it easier for gluing up I'm using PVA glue for this because I want a permanent Bond you'll see me using High glue but that's in cases where there is joinery and you might want to take that joinery apart in the future so PVA is the right glue for this job and I prefer to put it on both sides of the joint that way that just gives me a little insurance I've got enough glue for the job clamping on here is going to be delicate just to make sure I align everything up and get gluing pressure so it's nice and flush here it's a little bit proud here meaning it's sticking up higher than this and this is a little bit higher here but you can see I've got glue squeeze out here that's exactly what we want to see when gluing things up I need this to sit for 24 hours to make sure that glue is coming to full strength there are really three different things you should be looking at on your glue bottle the first one is open time or assembly time that's how long you have from when you apply the glue to when you have to have everything assembled the second one is clamping time this one tells me I've got 30 to 90 minutes it needs to sit in the clamps but that doesn't mean that it's come to full strength the third one is cure time this takes 24 hours to cure and that means it's coming to full strength and I want this at full strength before I start Machining it because I could be weakening it otherwise the next step is for me to work on these drawers and get them glued together so I'll set this out of the way and this is where I'm going to pull out High glue so I've got two different types of high glue here and what I'm going to do is use high glue to repair these because if there's a problem with a drawer in the future High glue will allow me to take that apart replace a part and put it back together again so it's really important to use a glue that's reversible now I've got a small Groove here I've got to get glue into and I can only open this up so far so what I'm going to use is a blunt tip syringe put that tip on and then I'm taking the liquid hot glue and adding it in here and that'll allow me to inject it into that tight spot there now when you're gluing drawers together it's really important that you're not gluing the bottom of the drawer in a bottom of a drawer is always loose it's the ends here that need the glue so just some glue along the seam here on both sides and we'll be good to go I'll just add a clamp on here tighten it up and then we're ready to move on to the next drawer these four glued up and I still have some clamps in my clamp rack so I'm going to pull out the drawers from the other pedestal glue them up and then I've got about 90 minutes to wait so it's a perfect time for me to slip out of the workshop and get a haircut please give us a thumbs up so more people will see our videos everything's been clamped up long enough here I can take the clamps off and when it was off camera I clamped up this file drawer take a look at it it's pretty cool you can see these dividers built in here this would have been for file storage before they had hanging files so a great way to keep those separated and a little pocket at the back here so great use of the storage space along clamp everything here get these drawers set aside and then I'll put down some padding it'll bring in the desktop we'll take a look at it [Music] it looks like there are screws here that are holding on the top so I'll take this apart and we'll look at the tamboo and figure out why the roll top isn't opening all the way foreign okay so I'll take this off and we'll see what's jamming it up oh wow look at this cavity that's why the roll top isn't rolling back I suspect it's supposed to roll back to here so there's probably about that much stuff jammed in here I'm going to set this aside let's take a look so just put a glove on I'm not sure what's in here but what's probably happened is there's a gallery here where the roll top moves up and down someone probably set things on top of this gallery and this just over the years they've accumulated down in here there's a pencil a little ad oh so it's Davy Crockett on it there's a little star decoration what's this oh an old-fashioned magnet looks like a game piece just gently take all this paper out and we can take a look at it oh wow check this out a ruler Ted Jackson auctioneer oh there's a stamp okay so we're starting to get into something valuable take a look at this up close so there's a one cent stamp not sure what that would be worth but definitely worth hanging on to we'll see what other Treasures are buried in here this next thing here says family Journal monthly number maybe we've got a date on this you can see the date there May 1966. there's a big chunk of something here what's all this foreign book in here oh I even got a live spider there's a book of some sort oh it's got some names in it some writing and foreign coupon a turkey coupon from red and white that's an old grocery store from Canada another coupon but you can see there's handwriting there so this might have some interesting family history for the owner there's certainly Lots in here I'll go for another grab bag and see we oh here's another yardstick or is this one from Farmers Mutual fire insurance company Lindsay so this was from 1970 celebrating 75 years a continuous service that's in really good shape oh I remember these chocolates little packages of gum you should get those at Halloween and another Cherokee coupon this is oh that's a picture of someone building a house well it looks like we're getting closer to the bottom here oh there we go that's the release so here's the top of the roll top so you can see here as I push this up this moves up so this is probably as far back as that went oh here's a letter with a five cent stamp on it and some more photos oh this is a recipe card divider for sandwiches so this is postage inside here is a beautiful stamp check that out that way I have some value for the owner pretty cool so it looks like a hockey player just by the clothing the shoulder pads and it says how how it's hard to read yard Winnipeg bombers do you know who that is let me know in the comments here Great Northwestern Telegraph company this is sent from Port Perry February 14th 1920. here's everything that came out of the back of that desk including some old negatives so I was a little ambitious thinking that I could get everything in this plastic here but some of the stuff needs to be protected like these stamps so I'll make sure it gets packaged up nice and neat and get this back to the customer with the top vacuumed off we can now look at the finish so back here this would be some of the original finish but up front you can see how worn it is there's a couple of problems with the finish so here it looks like something has been stuck to it maybe a newspaper and it's a little bit worn across the front and over here there's another spot that needs some attention so the first step is to test the finish I suspect it's a shellac and if it is that's relatively easy to repair I'm going to start by cleaning off the top but before I do I want to take the hardware out and a tip for you when you're dealing with slotted screws use a knife to clean up the slot as much as you can sometimes finish builds up in there and if you just put your slotted screwdriver in there and give it a Twist you could end up really stripping the head there so you see all that finish that's coming out of there that'll help make sure that when I put a screwdriver in it seats really well and I can turn the screw the first step is to clean this off with a Degreaser so I'm using something called Spray Nine there's something else called crud cutter that I've seen people use as well so I need to saturate this just let it sit for a minute and then what I use is a synthetic steel wool to go through and clean it off you can see some of these white bubbles are already turning brown just from the dirt that's on the surface here I'll wipe this off and we'll see how we're doing yes wow look at all that dirt so all of that needs to come off before we can even attempt to do anything with the Finish you can see that area where it looked like there was paper stuck here it's coming off clean so that's great I'll give you the before and after here so you can see there's a bit of dirt here there's a lot right here it's almost black and then we've got this Mark here so I'll spray this on let it sit for a minute and then give it a scrub if you look right here you can see the bubbles they're already turning brown so it's time to give it a scrub and get this cleaned up and as I'm scrubbing this what I'm doing is I'm rubbing with the grain because this pad is slightly abrasive and that way I'm not putting scratches into the surface that are going to be noticeable let's take a look and see what it looks like but just look at that all that dirt that's in there this really needed some TLC on the back here behind us you can see there's so much dust there it just doesn't want to wipe up with paper towel so a little bit of Spray Nine let's see what it does wow that brought it back in a hurry nice now just to clean off anything that's remaining let me use some mineral spirits and wipe it down that way I'll make sure I've got no contaminants that we'll be playing with the Finish so you can see the Finish is already looking much better but there are some spots that have paint on them here and here so I need to scrape those off my preferred method for dealing with stuff like this is a plastic razor blade so it can really peel things off without damaging the Finish but in both of these cases it seems like they're really level with the Finish so that's where a traditional razor blade comes in what I do is I just use the corner to dig in slightly into that finish and Chip this piece out now depending on what type of wood you're working with this might be easier than others with Oak there's open green so those dark lines foreign lines and the darker areas are actually voids so they're going to be deeper but I just gently work my way around until I can get all of that color off the reason I prefer the plastic razor blade is because it doesn't really damage or dig into the Finish but this one was really below the surface of the Finish so this is going to require a bit of a touch up to disguise this Mark another technique is a bit of a scraping action so we'll try it here and the idea is to get the paint off without hopefully going through the Finish as you can see there as I'm scraping away I'm getting some of that dark green that's great but this is a process you really have to make sure you stop before you get carried away with it here's a spot which is a glob of something sticking on there let's just check the plastic razor blade yeah see this just peels it right off perfect it's unfortunate that the back Corners have paint on them it's almost like someone was painting against the wall and didn't want to move the furniture so I've got to gently work this off and get it back to just hopefully the Finish without having to do any stain touch-ups the last part of the cleanup is this residue that's underneath where the top gets attached so I'm just taking a chisel clearing it out so we can get this cleaned up and then once has to finish now I'm taking this off with a chisel the scraper doesn't seem to do much but a technique that seems to work best is to get the bulk of this out with the Chisel and then give it a bit of a scrape to get it right down to the bare wood I'll give it one more scrub down here just to clean it off and then we'll take a look so with it all cleaned up you can see there's a shine here so this is a finish there's a bit of a shine here there's a finish and this is bare wood so I was Liquid cleaning off adhesive here and when they attach this there's a bit of a problem you see there's a crack right across here and there's another one right around here and what's happening is we've got wood movement this is solid oak an inch thick and in the summertime it expands with humidity in the winter time it contracts as the humidity gets less and less in the air and season over season this is what starts to develop now this is just cosmetic at this point but if I don't fix this this crack will continue on into the piece so this shouldn't be glued down the screw holes need to be elongated so it allows for wood movement so when I finish this I'm going to put the finish right over top here because there's no need to glue it I'm using denatured alcohol and what I'm doing is I'm going to test in a few different spots here and figure out what type of finish we have so with denatured alcohol if this is a shellac finish it'll get sticky and that is sticky right there this that's sticky as well and that is sticky okay so what that's telling me is this is a shellac finish which is great because shellac is an easy finish to repair and I'll be able to put a couple coats on here and get it protected you see how there are some layer spots here this is where the Finish is no longer there so what it's telling me is the Finish is holding the color so I'm using Garnet shellac this is a very dark shellac and what I'm going to do is Pat it on these areas here that are lacking the finish and that way what I'll do is deepen the color so when I put on the shellac in the rest of the area they'll be less noticeable now as I mentioned at the start this is not going to be a video about refinishing this is about repairing a finish so this shell actorize very rapidly and you can see it's already starting to look better so I'll just Pat on a little bit more in these areas that need some touch up to get that color more rich now on the top of the gallery there's also an issue with finish so I'll turn this over so you can see it so I need to go through and clean and prep this as well and then I'll put the finish on both at the same time before I move on to finishing this is the piece I'm repairing there's a split back here I just want to glue this up and get it in clamps so I can move on to this piece once I'm done putting the coat of finish on so there's good glue squeeze out so clamp that and we're good to go [Music] I'm ready to mask off the piece here I don't want any of the Finish dripping so let me just grab a section of this cut off and then I use masking tape to secure it in place I'm applying the Finish just to this top edge here so I want to make sure I'm not going to drip anything down here and make a mess so a little investment of time here of masking we'll just give me some insurance that it's all going to turn out okay there's just a few spots here that are a little bit lighter so I'm going to use a grading marker and just fill those in foreign mixed up from shellac flakes and it's very thick it's like syrup and it's far too thick to put on but when you mix it up from shellac flakes the purpose is to get those shellac flakes dissolved which I've done here and then mix it up as you need it so I need to get this eight pound cut down to a two pound cut which means if I take one portion of this let's cover that back up and mix it up with denatured alcohol then that'll get me the eight pound or the two pound cut that I need to brush this on one two three so we'll stir that up a little bit cover this back up now you can see we've got a nice thin consistency here that's exactly what we want now I've dried out a foam brush here this is something you can't use with shellac it will actually break down as you use it you need to be using a natural bristle brush for this and you can see I got a little messy last time I used this so I just need to make sure I'm wearing a glove and that way I won't get the shellac on my hands now shellac is not a very toxic finish that's what's nice about it the most harmful part in it is the denatured alcohol this is flammable but it's the alcohol that's evaporating that cures the Finish okay we're all ready to go now I'm working on a piece what I want to do is start at the back and work my way forward if I work my way this way and I'm working over top I could end up putting drips on a piece that I've already touched English lock you can't rebrush the area you've gone over so I'm just going to quickly go over the back part here and now the clock is going I need to keep moving at all times here because this is actually drying as I go it makes it a little tricky on the ends here where I've got to keep putting finish foreign but as you can see it goes on pretty quick it's the same process here I'm just going to start at the back and work my way forward making sure I get full coverage now I think what I'm going to do is actually do the sides here first come all the way around because I've got this natural dividing line where the top gets attached I'll just make finishing this part easier and then I'll work in the center after that now because this is such a thin finish I just have to be cautious on the edges here that I'm not overloading it and causing drips to hang over the edge so put most of the finish on the top here get that brushed on and then work my way over the edge okay now it's just back and forth as I look at the Finish you can see there are problems with different areas on the desktop this isn't something I can deal with when it's wet so I have to let it dry and then start to tackling the Finish is now dry and the worst spot on this is over on this corner you can see here the texture of it it's really bad so there's a lot of confusion around what to do with a surface like this this is Shellac and shellac is supposed to cover off anything there are a couple different problems you can have some with various polishes you put on that have silicone in them but in that case you end up with fish eyes they're like little circles and that's not what this is we'll take a closer look and you can see it's a bit like a crackled finish now if this was an issue where the Finish wasn't bonding to the layer below it this would flake off like uh sunburned skin so that would be an adhesion problem this is not an adhesion problem what we've got here is basically a finish underneath that's reacted and dissolved some of the finish and caused this so what I need to do is now sand this and I want to sand just enough to take the texture off and then I'll have to look at building it up in a very thin manner so I'm going to knock this back with 220 grit sandpaper and if I take too much off of here as you've seen before the Finish is actually the color so if I take it right back to bare wood I have to then deal with a staining issue so what I'm looking to do is just take off this texture I've got here and then I'll hit it again with some more finish what I want to do is put a blocking layer of shellac in here so that it prevents it from bubbling up and reacting again and then I can get back to putting on the regular Garnet shellac my solution is to use spray shellac and what I'm going to do is put some light coats down that'll minimize the amount of alcohol seeping into the existing finish and hopefully that'll block it off that I can put some garnish black on top Now when using a spray finish like this I have to wear a respirator with an organic cartridge I generally avoid using finishes like this but in this case it's the right tool for the job the next step is to wash this down very thoroughly with mineral spirits just to make sure there are no contaminants and I can get the spring foreign I've been able to cover off the problem area I ended up putting on seven light coats and if you take a close look here you can see there's still a little bit of texture that texture is something I need to sand down but right now because I've got so many coats on here I need to really let this Harden if you work shellac before it's really hardened you'll end up having it ball on you and it'll just make a mess and you can see by the surface of this there's a good reflection on the cabinet Sherlock is always shiny when you use it and what I need to do is knock that Sheen back so it matches the rest of the desk what I'm going to be doing is putting everything back together again and then I'll knock that Sheen down so I can see exactly how I can get it to match so that'll be once I put it together but let me get this out of the way and let this stuff Harden while I work on the pedestal and get that back together again be sure to go to our website and subscribe drive to our newsletter for links to new videos Workshop tips and more now back to fixing furniture I've got all the parts in the bench here and this is the piece I had glued up before that had the split in it so I now need to trim off this section here and here and then I can level it out [Music] foreign as you can see Power Tools make quick work of trimming this up but to level it out it requires hand tools a card scraper is the best tool for this first of all I just need to put this in the Vise lock it down and a card scraper has a little bit of a hook on the edge of it so you can feel it if you're doing this and all you need to do is flex it a little bit and scrape it in the spot that you want it to now I'm trying very hard not to scrape the existing wood but I know I'm going to so when I stain this I'll have a little bit of a repair to do on the wood itself so right here it's flat I've got a bit of a high point here and it's a little bit high right down to here so I just need to take that down as gently as I can without touching the finish so let's see so you can see there I'm taking the finish off but that means it's flush got just a little bit more to go here foreign so there's two ways to judge work like this one is by the eye and the other is the with the fingertip and the eye is telling me it looks good but the finger not so much just a bit of a hump left here and I'll be done foreign [Music] I've just taken off enough to finish I might as well just go for it [Music] oh foreign so I'm just going to feather in that little tip there okay we're good to go so you can see the existing wood is darker and that grain has really been pronounced on the new piece you don't see that I'm not sure how the grain is going to look so I'm just going to take a little bit of water rub it on here and I'll get a preview so it's actually looking pretty good so I'm going to set that green and then we can start putting the finish on the first step is to take some 220 and just sand it down I want to make sure nice and smooth ready for the Finish I'm also going to sand down the edges of this finish here just to get rid of it seems to have chipped off just some of the harsh lines there might seem odd but I'm using black acrylic paint here I use the acrylic paint because it soaks into the Grain and then I can sand off the surface because I've got a nice dark line that I can then put acrylic stain on top and it gets me that look of old oak if I use a heat gun it just speeds along the process I just have it on the lowest setting it's as much air as it is heat so nice and gentle now I take the Sandpaper and sand off everything but where the grain is so that's nice and smooth now and I'm ready to put on the stain but you can see it's pretty dirty here on the existing finish so I'm just going to clean that off first and then I've got a nice clean surface to work with two acrylic stains here and I don't remember which one is the right one for this process so I'll just open them both up and pull out a brush and I have a piece of scrap left over I think it's probably this darker one let's see yep that looks like the right tone so nice thing about the stain is you can put on different depths of color as you go through and if you don't like what you're doing you can wipe it off it's looking a little bit red to me so I might actually need to put a little bit of black in there to get that darker there's some scours here from when I took off the paint so I'm just going to touch them up with a graining marker here and then I can lock everything in with some of the spray shellac foreign on this and it's time to test fit it on here it does need a little bit of touch up still but I don't want to do it in isolation of just looking at this piece I want to look at it in context of the whole piece so I need to fit this piece make sure that joint fits and then we can glue it together if you're enjoying this video and would like to support us please help us get to our 100 000 subscriber goal by the end of 2022. share this video with others that'll help us out now because I patched this in here and we've got a joint I need to make sure that this fits in here before I attempt to put glue on this and realize we've got a mistake so this is something called a dry fit and what I'll do is line it up at the top and see oh yeah it's too tight I need to widen that out a little bit I realized that I didn't clean out the glue squeeze out when I glued up this break here so I'll clean that out I'm going to take off just a little bit of wood with a sharp chisel and widen that out and then give it a test fit it should fit snug but it shouldn't have to be forced okay we'll test fit it again lines up the top here first and then I can work in the bottom here yeah it's starting to go in I'll get a clamp out so I'll put this clamp on here and give it a squeeze and let's see if it comes together there we go with this joint fit I can now glue everything up now there's a number of pieces here I'm going to glue together that all have to come together very quickly because of the glue time so I'm going to just set up the camera and you can watch and see how that happens but when you're gluing up something like this if you're not used to glue UPS you might want to do it in small sections and then assemble everything later I do it all at once because it's just faster in my workshop I can get through this piece and on to the next on the bottom here I had to get creative with my clamps I've only got three 36 inches so I needed a fourth one so I've taken one clamp here one clamp here clamp them in the middle and they all come together I got lucky because this is a straight stretch but I need to shop for more clamps I've bought these clamps about 20 years ago so I'm in the market for some more and I'm going to be doing a test here on this channel of different clamps the well known brand names as well as some less expensive ones test them out and see what works best for my workshop stay tuned for that video probably in the next few months the glue is all dried now so I can take the clamps off and it feels good to have this all put together again now what I need to do is touch up this little corner here and I need to clean this side off just to make sure I can see the true color to make sure I get it matching just perfect this is the back of the desk and you can see just how dusty and dirty it is this is the outside of the desk and you can see there's some dirt on here too that needs to be washed off and this is where I need to match the stain so I'll get this cleaned up I'm probably through the cleaning here and I've done the back you can see what a dramatic difference that is and on the side here I've stopped part way through so I've finished off these three areas here but not here and you can see just with a Degreaser how much of a difference that makes I finished cleaning off the side and look how handsome that is I'm going to prop it up here and then I can paste some close attention to this area that I've patched in so up close you can see where this patch is and it's slightly lighter than the surrounding area here and here and there's a bit of texture to it so I just need to sand it down I've got 600 sandpaper here that's just to smooth it out and what I'm seeing is the color that's missing is the same color that's in the garnish black okay so that's smooth now I'm just going to take a small pad put some garnish like on it and then wipe that on see how that starts to blend in so it'll take a couple coats but a few more applications like that and the repair will disappear you see there's a little bit over here as well if I just add a little bit of shellac to the pad here and just lightly go over it disguise those as well so you can see this is getting darker and richer but I want to accentuate these green lines here so I'm just going to use a grainy marker and get some of these marks a little more pronounced so as I'm adding green lines in here what it's doing is just helping that repair disappear I've got a few more coats of shellac on here and it's coming in but I'm just going to use another greeting marker to get it a little bit closer in some of these areas where it's a little lighter so just a few lines like this rub them in essentially I'm just providing a bit of a tint on the Finish to blend it in a little bit more down here and I'll put a few more coats of Sherlock on and I think we'll be good to go so it's got a couple more coats of shellac on here and it's all good the original cut that I made was on an angle here and then straight down here you're looking at this dead on so you're seeing it here but it's actually going to be sitting on the floor at the back against the wall so you're never going to be looking at this in this detail I've got a little ding here that I'll just touch up with the touch-up marker and we're good to go with this all fixed I can now move on to cleaning off the other pedestal the drawer faces and then get back to the top before I put these drawers back in the pedestal I need to put this Locking System back in place it's pretty cool it's just some pieces that have been dated in here with notches let me see if I can figure out how it goes back together this locking piece has a slot in the bottom and it goes on top of the screw and now the in the corner this goes here so oh that Notch goes there cool that works I'll put the drawer in here and we'll see how this works nice that's really cool all those coats of shellac I put on this desktop are now hard and that's critical for this next step when I sprayed it on what was happening was the shellac was going on the low points as well as the high points so what I'm going to do now is sand it down to take those high points down to the low points to get a nice smooth surface and to do that I'm going to be using mineral oil and waterproof sandpaper I'm going to be using the extra fine which is a 320 grit there's also a super fine 400 grit and these packages have some great detail in the back let me just zoom in in here and you can see it so the extra fine is the 320 for sanding between coats removing Bubbles and dust the superfine is really before your last coat of finish so we'll take a sheet of the pack here and I'm going to just get into quarter sheets this is a jig I made years ago and it's really handy it just uses a hacksaw blade here with a bit of a space and that cuts sheets in the quarters I'm going to try something new here I've got this foam packing block that I got it's really firm and I'm going to use that as a basis here instead of using a wooden block and see how that works so I'm just going to put a bit of mineral oil on here and then start rubbing it down with the grain but before I do let me show you the before of what this looks like foreign the function of the oil is to lubricate the Sandpaper and you can see here I've got little pieces balled up here this is showing me a sign that I need to stop using this piece of sandpaper and use another one so I've done three quarters here I've got one quarter left and I'm on my third sheet of sandpaper so it gives you an idea of you can't get through a whole piece like this on one's piece of sandpaper it's about a whole sheet to do this foreign [Applause] I think that block worked pretty well for me there's an edge here that's coming up so this isn't perfectly flat if I would have had a sanding block here I would have been wearing down that front so that's a keeper so avoid the mineral oil off and I'm going to use mineral spirits to wipe it down but you can see there's a little bit of a texture in the front here this is from the open grain and some damage and this I could take down to make it perfectly smooth but that's going to look like a factory finish this is a vintage piece it's going to look like it's been used and used so that's some of the character I want to keep in this piece a little bit of mineral spirits here we'll just get it ready for some more shellac when I mentioned earlier that adding a quarter shellac is an easy process I was referring to this experience not this experience I wanted to show this to you so you could see the extreme of what might happen in an old finish here's a close-up so you can see some of that texture up front but this is part of the wear so back here this is what the Finish is looking like one of our subscribers gab 2759 suggested purchasing this book classic finishing techniques by Sam Allen it's a really good reference around how to use French polishing and shellac and there's something here called a fad this is the British technique and I'm going to use a fad to actually apply this shellac I'm just taking a nice soft cotton cloth here and I want to fold it in a way that I don't have any wrinkles we'll bring this up here bring this up here one more time over and so there I've got something that I can put the shellac in fold it over and now apply it to the surface so put my shellac here this is a two pound cut the initial soaking is going to take a little bit to get it through to the other side and then I can start applying it and the technique is just bring it up from the very top I'm going to get a little bit more in here okay so it's not coming through I'll just straighten out the cloth and this is a touchdown come to the end and lift off just like this this coat is dried and I have to say I'm disappointed on how little finish is on there so the technique I'm going to use is similar to what I've always been doing and that is charge the cloth right on the front face and then sweep the finish on from one side to the other that seems to be putting on more of a finish and builds up faster the technique in that book was talking about French polishing it's not really what I'm doing here I'm looking to get on a couple coats of protective finish I've got three more quotes of Sherlock on here so I've got a nice build up lots of protection for the wood the area over here didn't come out perfect but I'm putting a gallery on top of that so you're not really going to see it we'll give you a close-up you can see the Finish reflecting the light on the ceiling here there are some imperfections in it but given the state of the rest of the desk I'll just come to the front here where this is used and you can see a lot of imperfections here I'm happy with what it is for this particular project now this is far from a French polish I've got another project coming up where I'm actually going to experiment with that for the first time so I'll share that with you I need to rub this down with steel wool just to take the sheen down but first I've got a crack over on this side if you remember from the wood movement I'm fixing that at the end of the finishing process so I can match the color perfectly I use burden sticks for this so I just choose one that's close here and then what I can do is put it in and see how it looks I've got a battery operated soldering gun here and just let that heat up and then fill the void so let that Harden for a few seconds and then you can peel back the excess and we'll take a look at how well it's matching not too bad there's a little bit of light color there so I'm just going to grab a darker one and a little bit of color into it so I'm just blending the new color with the existing color in that seam so the different colors going on here it's really dark here it's a little bit lighter there a little bit lighter here and this is why you can't use a wood filler first and then put the finish on because you've got these color variations this really is the best way to get a color match on your repair I'll give you close up so you can take a look so it's right here all I need to do is rub it down with a little synthetic steel wool and I'll wipe another coat of shellac on top and you'll never know it's there I'll leave a link up here and a video I did with mohawk finishes it teaches you how to use the filler and even on hardwood floors how to fix some damage now I've got the rest of my finishing books here this is my library that I rely on and one of the things I've learned over the years is the Finish needs to be rubbed out at the end it's not good enough just to put a finish on if that Finishing Touch is the rub and that gives you the feel you're looking for it's typically four odd steel wool that would use for this and some of these older books that's what you're going to see newer technology are 3M abrasive pads sometimes known as Scotch Brite pads and the white is the equivalent of the four odd so there are different colors here but this is the one I'm going to use to rub out this finish knock down that Sheen and get it to a nice satin look the same as the rest of the body of this desk it might be tempted on a pad like this to use your fingers and do this but what you're doing is you're getting inconsistent pressure what I find is if I put the palm of my hand on here and give it a push this gives me a nice even pressure to work down the Finish so there you go I've got it down to I think what's the right sheen what I'm going to do now is assemble the top together bring it back here and I'll be able to tell for sure I've got to elongate the holes on either end here so that this wood movement here doesn't cause further cracking where the screws were and then I can assemble this with the gallery and then bring it back and take a final look foreign foreign position I have to deal with the wood movement across this board let me describe this across here there's a number of screws and this wood needs to expand and contract this way but there's a screw here and a screw here and I did elongate those holes but because they're countersunk they're still stuck in a single spot this countersump screw has a wedge shape on it and it's kept in that one area so what I need to do is move to a flathead screw where I can elongate this hole here with a flat surface and that will allow this flat surface to move this way and this way with wood movement to cut the slot I'll use my trim rotor and a straight cutting bit [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] area for the pan head screw to be able to move up and down and if I put the screw in the hole you can see it can move as well [Applause] foreign Service Announcement respirators are something you should wear when you're creating dust like this wood dust can cause permanent lung damage and reduce your breathing capacity it's also our carcinogen when you're creating wood dust it can hang in the air for up to 20 minutes the stuff you can't even see so what I'm going to do is take this outside assemble it all together and that way I can give you a better idea of how it's all come together attaching the top is a little bit tricky because I need to align these pins in the back foreign have to line up the holes underneath and make sure that the roll top works as I open it you can see the unlock happening at the back there and Pull It Forward it works on the right side let's check the left unlock I'll put this in the unlock position and then I can put the drawers in [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] when restoring Furniture it's really up to the customer what they'd like to do I recommended putting a lock set and a scrunchion plate on here but they decided they wanted to keep this as it is this finish is going to last for decades to come I recommend using a coaster when you've got hot drinks or alcoholic drinks though when you've got a shellac finish my next project are these outdoor chairs outdoor furniture requires different techniques and adhesives to make sure they're going to last through the elements if you haven't subscribed yet click over here click on that Bell icon to get notified every time we publish a video thanks for watching fixing furniture [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fixing Furniture

Views: 898,362

Keywords: furniture repair, woodworking, furniture restoration, restoration, how to, wood glue, roll-top desk, desk, desk repair, tambour, desk gallery, desk drawer, desk pedestal, wood repair, shellac, shellac finish, mineral spirits, scotch bright, dozuki saw, wood filler

Id: TxIXjDTyRaA

Length: 79min 8sec (4748 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022