Restoring an ANTIQUE Spinet Desk - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

thank you I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in Gorham Maine this is a nice little antique spin at desk it's called the spin it because it resembles a musical instrument called the spinet that's in the harpsichord family this piece is all solid mahogany it opens like this to reveal the desk interior for the pull out writing service cubby holes and drawers it also has a bottom drawer pencil drawer I think this desk was made around 1900 it resembles a lot of furniture I've worked on made by the propane furniture company in Boston from that time period all of it was solid mahogany reproductions and the dovetails are machine cut dovetails that make me think this piece is after 1900 but uh pretty early in the game so what's happened is the Finish was already somewhat tired but then it got water damage all along the top here dripping down the sides and the interior and so the main thing is to get rid of the water damage and sort of try to keep a minimal restoration one thing I didn't mention in the introduction was that these legs are loose and I I thought maybe they were screwed in there but they don't tight they just Spin and spin actually this one just tightened a little bit I want to take this uh these Lids off anyway so I can flip this over and see what's going on with the legs foreign foreign there's just a big old nut in there so I can take these off when I reinstall them I'll put a lock washer in there foreign I'm just going to leave the legs on here for now I'll uh I'll take them off when I need to I knew I had to have a reason to leave these legs on this uh I want to experiment a little bit on the back of it the back here is a great place to experiment a bit and figure out exactly what we're going to do I put some alcohol on a rag here and Pat it foreign looks better wet but the marks aren't really going away and as it dries they really they really come back one thing I noticed about this piece when I first saw it is that it seems to have very little finish on it and yet originally I'm sure it had a much uh higher build higher gloss finish either varnish or even nitrocellulose lacquer which makes me think it's been was refinished in the past I feel like this allows me to be a little bit more aggressive I'm going to try some four out steel wool and alcohol and see if that does a better job and I think I can see the marks but actually going away yeah as it dries I can see the marks have gone away now it's also a lot lighter than the surrounding surface I think I might do a quick tape off of the sides and then redo this back completely see how I like it in other words I'm going to clean it down with alcohol uh restain it and varnish it foreign okay I'll uh let this dry being alcohol it uh won't take take long at all I'll give it an hour to make sure it's completely dry I mixed up some dye stain I'm going to use I used these products from Mohawk one part Brown mahogany one part perfect brown and two parts of the retarder made for the stain foreign all right it looks good now I'll uh apply a coat of varnish one of the many things I like about this water locks tongue oil varnish is that they've been making it this way since 1910 which is about the same age as this piece of furniture foreign looks great I've talked to the customer explained to them what I'm doing and they've given the approval so I think I can go ahead and do the rest of the desk as the back of the desk drive you can really see how well it matches the rest of the desk color and everything although I'm going to put more finish on it but I can confidently go ahead now I'm going to scrub down the entire desk with alcohol note how I'm scrubbing with the grain even though I'm using the finest steel wool 4-0 steel wool I'm not going to sand the wood so I don't want to risk any cross-grain scratches or anything so I'll just keep scrubbing with the grain note how the alcohol what it looks like laying on the surface like that it almost looks like a possible contamination problem we'll be looking for it I still got some marks down at this end I'm going to let this dry and I'm going to treat it with oxalic acid foreign foreign foreign scratches and gouges like these I'm going to leave I think I will take the legs off for this operation so off camera I drilled out these two by fours to accommodate the legs foreign foreign foreign so I go over the desk or object once with the solvent which is alcohol and as you can see it gets pretty dirty so I pour that dirty alcohol this is a cone filter and a paper towel and I'll use what filters out later and then I'll go over everything again with clean thinner clean piece of steel wool and a clean rag and then that solvent from the second wash and the filtered solvent become the the solvent I used for the first wash here foreign the two pieces with the worst damage are the lid and the false drawer front everything else seems to come out with the alcohol wash so I'm going to try some oxalic acid on these oxalic acid comes in a powder form you mix it with hot water I'm going to take about 12 16 ounces of hot water so it's 350 milliliters or more our tap water is very hot about 130 degrees or more about 55 degrees Celsius to measure the Exotic I'm just using a one ounce measuring cup here so you metric people are on your own in that regard but it's not um it's not scientific I don't really measure stuff out very carefully usually I'll sand the surface a little bit to prep it for the Exotic but I'm gonna I don't want to sand this piece of furniture so I'm going to try it without sanding always do the entire surface not don't try to do just the one spot where the damage is I think you can maybe see that the surface is resisting the water a little bit so I will uh scrub the Exotic with a gray scotch bite pad I think I can see some improvement already as I Scrub but uh we'll just leave it on let it do its work sometimes you'll see a stain come out right away but you really have to wait uh until it dries completely and keep it wet for a while too yesterday evening I came in and looked at these they had dried I could still see some of the marks it had done a good job but off camera because it was just the evening I mixed up an entirely new batch of exotic the same way I did before and brushed on another coat it's hard to tell yet but it looks like it did a good job when using oxalic acid you must rinse off this residue thoroughly if the object is not small enough to do in the sink Take It Outside in the driveway you've seen me doing that my videos with a garden hose if you don't rinse the oxalic off well enough when you start the sand you will become immediately aware of it foreign the watermarks are almost gone 95 99 this is the worst area here where this red marks are this darker area here is simply where the wood wasn't faded out by the sun with that false drawer front folded over this area on the false drawer front is also largely gone I see a little bit right there but and I think I can faintly see some rings but it's largely gone so now we'll just uh let these dry at least overnight all right let's see what we got you know I'm not seeing any of the watermarks here are those red marks they're faded quite a bit and this was an area that had a lot of damage this was the worst of the damage it looks good I see a line here and I see a still shadow of a ring but overall not bad at all now my goal going into this was not to sand this piece of furniture but I am just with the 220 lightly by hand just in these areas like where that line is where that ring is sometimes it just takes that and uh the Water didn't raise the grain a lot but they're not exactly smooth so just a real light one foreign just the light going over there's still some Shadows of water damage it's scratches I'm making no effort to get out that kind of damage it'll look fine under the Finish you have to check these edges sometimes you have to go at these edges a little bit more if there's drip marks so you got to check all your edges well those red marks can stay [Music] I'm going to stain these with the same dye stain I used on the back of course these are those red marks all the watermarks appear to be gone at least so far typically I like to leave some of these warm spots but there's something about these legs I I really don't like I tried some the dye stain maybe helped a little but not much but I found that this medium oak marker seems to do a pretty good job thank you the good news is I only have to do this 32 times which I won't show on camera well that only took about 15 minutes I should have recorded it okay the stain's dried for a few hours I'm ready to put on the first coat of varnish uh you know uh long time viewers of my videos are going to be wondering why I'm finishing that this here and not in my little finishing Corner down here and that's because these little chicks have taken over the corner our barns being renovated so uh they're here for now for a few more weeks this is the end with some of the worst damage foreign foreign this was the area with the worst damage here are those red marks foreign [Music] thank you foreign you can see this area trying to fish eye I think I saw that when it was wet with the the alcohol also what I'll do is finish putting my coat on the top so I've had good luck in the past this is the area that was trying to fish eye it's already better but I just keep tipping It Off there's a very slow drying finish but I'll stand here for a while if I need to I keep tipping it off until it it dries without that fisheye type Behavior this is the area of the top that was water damaged I think I should touch up these little scratched areas this is the same stain I used on the pieces that I needed to stain I'll let this dry while I uh coat the drawer fronts I like to finish on the knob I'll leave that alone [Music] thank you this is the area where all those little chips were I touched up like right there there okay uh everything will dry overnight well that's all the time we have for today will the touch-ups look pretty good will the tipping off solve the fisheye problem stay tuned the exciting conclusion of our video is coming up next time right yes yes can't wait okay good

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 154,898

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

Id: U0t6YHUlNt4

Length: 29min 45sec (1785 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022