Restoring... Blackbeard's Treasure Chest?

[Music] hello everyone it's trena from John's furniture repair and I'm in here with one of our last projects in the shop we have a few more just this is one of the last ones and it's an old trunk that's actually one of my very good friends here it's her mother's so uh she's one of the the first people who I was really good friends with in the horse world and she's helped my horse a lot as she went through her blindness and uh her name is Marcy and she has a Magna wave business here in Windsor Essex and she's quite a gem so this is her mom's and her mom is also wonderful and we're going to be restoring it and giving it to her before we leave I've had it sitting you've probably seen it sitting under this table that I work at sometimes in videos and uh it's finally made its way on top of the bench so let me show you some details on this guy after growing up in my dad's restoration shop and learning everything he knows I'm continuing on with the business in my my own shop and after 25 years I can truly say I love this job and I just have to share it with you whether it's a Priceless 300-year old handcarved piece of history or just an ordinary table or dresser I pour my heart into each and every piece a customer brings me I'm trena and this is John's furniture [Music] [Applause] repair all right so when I picked this up um it was actually in a barn where there was horses and other animals and it was a family that had been in her F or a trunk that had been in her family for a while and she gave it to me and it does have quite a bit of rust and damage there are some handles missing and uh stay tuned for how we deal with that and it's just kind of a beautiful old trunk it does have issues but it still is going to be a beautiful piece of antique furniture so inside there's no Stace I've got to hold it up here and there are some cracks in the lid and some area where there where there's been some repairs to the hinge there's only got one hinge on it right now um it looks like that's a new board back there um and the bottom is quite cracked up as well this is some beautiful old paper but I do have new actual trunk papers that we're going to be putting in here so I'll show you those but yeah it just needs a lot of attention and it's like a um this is like a a burlap that's glued onto the case with metal banding and hinges and Hardware with wood slots and some leather slots as well which are some some of them are missing so we won't be doing a total um repair of everything that's missing some things will just be missing we're going to leave it in a very rustic state I'm going to clean it seal it get rid of some arrest in places and repaper the interior so this right here is some paper and you can actually get this at Lee Valley they sell a couple of different styles it's like a I think it's called a brown aant a can't I'm not I can't say the word anyways that's a really beautiful color I think this one is blue no this one's Brown too okay okay so we're going to be doing a brown I can't let just say it on here I can't this right there that's the style of the pattern and it comes in blue brown and I think another color in Le Valley and they do have other uh Styles too so that'll be a little while later first let's uh vacuum a few years of dust off of this thing clean it up and get started on I don't know where to start actually anyways we'll just go where the wind blows [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] seriously please try again later [Music] okay so I think the first order of business is give this thing a bath um it's super dirty I'm really kind of feel like I want to replace the hinges but I think these are original so I don't want to do it but they're not in good shape I going have to take out the rivets definitely have to take out this interior board here and I might just use it again cuz it is a good idea so I'm just going to use a brush and I filled up a pail of uh crud cutter and water here and I am going to also spray some C cutter on the surface just to get it going with some water and we are going to have to remove all that um interior paper as well so I'll just do that and then scrub it all down it'll probably look a 100 times better just from this cuz it is super dirty I think I'm actually going to turn this upside down so that the water runs off of this instead of into here be a little bit better of an idea don't need to get this thing totally soaking oh forgot to get all the horse hay off the back off the [Music] bottom [Music] yeah here's the gross Water Dam it okay so I had this all drying last night complete wash down still looks pretty dirty but it looks it smells better anyways if I had smell a vision could tell you that anyways so I've been shining the metal here to see if that's what I really want to do I like it it looks a little bit more cleaned up but there's still like splotches of black paint and rust a little bit which we will seal in and then uh I think for the these parts here I'm just going to leave them with whatever damage they have because I think it looks kind of cool stuff like this abrasions I want to leave that I'm going to buff all the rust that's kind of gross but I'm not going to take off too much of everything I like how it looks especially you know around the edges of Hardware you've got like these black dirty marks which looks really cool but stuff I don't like is when it's you know all rusty and you can't really see any definition in the hardware and so I got a lot of buffing to do and I'm going to be using a little 3M wheel here and that's just a little sanding grit plastic wheel that they make in different grits this one's a 180 so it doesn't really scratch anything it's nice and fine and uh I'm going to clean up these slats on everything as well probably just scrub it with some alcohol try to get a little bit cleaner I'll try to get some of these stains out as well and just generally improve it without losing the character so cuz it looks pretty cool [Music] sh [Music] [Music] [Music] he okay so I have been grinding away on all these beautiful steel um Hardware pieces as well as all the banding and stuff and done some repairs that I'll show you and uh kind of repurposed the metal and done some cleaning so I'm using um alcohol to kind of clean up the shellac paper burlap areas and it kind of gives life back to the original [Music] color it does have some staining that won't come out and we might do some touch-ups on the very noticeable ones but other than that it looks pretty [Music] good yeah so it just softens up nicely and kind of re amalgamates the shellac then I just wipe off and that's what I'm been doing all the way around so you can kind of see it there but I like the metal cuz it's got a lot of pitting and stuff from the rust and I don't want to really wreck that I just want to get all the stuff that's crumbling off and then seal it back up okay so that's looking nice and clean got all the hardware cleaned up sh still a little bit tacky so that's why it's a little bit shiny and I wanted to show you my um fix for the bottom there was a couple of big holes in the middle here and this whole entire side was kind of missing so I stole some metal from the back was pretty questionable metal and I made a patch right there and I did a patch to cover around that edge there and then here as well so there's just no break in the metal and what I did on the back show you so on the back I kind of made a custom fit piece of wood and I will stain it to match that so that it doesn't um look weird so I do have to um fill these holes there's some strapping that we're not putting back on and I did uh fix also the holes on um where was it now pulled out something I don't remember okay and these um wooden slots I've kind of cleaned off a bunch of stuff on them so I'm going to restain them as well so they're a little bit darker but I like the worn look that looks good just not this much so I'll wash it down a bit more and I will do some touch-ups on the black paint um these metal strips are supposed to be black these are the old straps that they no longer have here you can see the slots that would go in right right there I guess I could steal my husband's old belts or something and stick them in there maybe I will anyways um yeah so the lid is looking good I've got some repairs on oh that's what I did I repaired the hinge mounts on the back of the lid there and did clean up the top as well so to do a little bit more uh work with the brush but it's looking good I'm really excited about this getting under shellac cuz everything's going to get really nice all right it's the next day and work continues on this guy so I want to get these um handles the rest of the handles out of the pockets on the side you can see here there's just pieces of them left in here so to get access to the nails holding those on I need to remove this so should just be held on with nails a lot of these trunks have nails and then they twist them over the other side that's what mostly they're made of so it's really hard to get things out it's probably nailed from the other side yes it is that's okay just pull it off of those nails and because this thing doesn't have a tray and we're not making one I'm not going to put these back on so just leave that alone you can see the nails sticking out there so I'll just pop those [Music] through and then you can you can't really see but if you could see around here a little curled nails that come through the side here what I'm going to do is wet this side I'm going to wet all of it pretty well I'll just do it now from the card CU we have to get all this paper off I was thinking about leaving it on and then just putting mine over top which works the way I do it I'll show you how I do it later but I think it's got some mold and stuff behind it so I think we'll just take it off it's really pretty paper though so I'm just going to let that sit and then be able to peel this off okay so I've got all the paper almost off of everything little bits of it left I'm going to let it dry um out in the sun and then I can vacuum up all the little bits and scrape off anything that's left so now you can see these little um curled over Nails here that's for the handle portion you can just see it's kind of curved over the wood so let me get two hands on this yeah these are huge well and they should be and I mean the handles so I just have to cut off this portion so I can pull off oh there he goes a break off so I can get off the other side looks like there's three of them one two three so get all those out and then we'll be able to get that rest of the leather out and prepare for the new handles okay so now that we've got those all cut off inside got it turned over here I'm just going to pull these nails out I think I think I can actually get these guys so if you see under here there's two more Nails holding down this leather strap and this strap looks like it was like one two three thinner straps they might have been yeah they were sewn [Music] together to get this width so I'm going to be ordering new hardware for this this and you can order trunk hardware and a lot of other really Antique Hardware like this from Kennedy Hardware in the states check it out so that's the same thing I'll be doing when I put these back on hopefully they come in the mail pretty quick cuz we really do have to get some stuff out of here we're moving so I'll get the rest of those guys out and then we'll be going into the sun to dry all right so I've got all of the paper off on the inside there a lot of ink stains it seems like the water went through the paper and kind of dyed stuff everywhere and I've got those handle covers off and the old handles out on both sides so before I take um one problem I have to deal with before everything is I like this repair this piece of wood that's along here it's nice to have that for the hinges the only problem is I have to decide if I want to take this hinge out because it is loose and it's bent and it doesn't work very well so I think um I will hopefully it's I think it's glued is the only problem it's going to be a little bit tough to get that off um the other thing I want to do before I put this outside in the sun is measure for panels the way I like to paper trunks is make very heavy uh class or cardboard panels that fit in here and wallpaper those because then the wood as it moves doesn't split the paper in the future so I have a whole pile of stock of papers that I used a heavy cardboard um that I used to paper so I'll be using wallpaper paste on that to do this and uh hopefully that that'll look good so I need to get that piece off of here first okay so I've got the uh bottom of the trunk measured out here so I'm just going to cut it with a utility knife a nice sharp one and use this as a straight edge okay so I'm ready to um I've marked all these and numbered them I'm ready to start gluing on some paper and I've got a few uh leftover pieces from my last job of the brown a campus this really pretty paper so I'm going to be using a it's called border repair adhesive it's wallpaper paste and I'm just going to use a foam roller and pour it in here there um the actual wallpaper gel paste um was what I wanted but this is what I have so I'm just going to use it up so I'm just going to roll it on oops yes so I've got the number on the [Applause] back I'm just going to really saturate this [Applause] cardboard and then I'm going to try to take some of my pieces that are left over and I'm going to leave a little bit of a lip and just smooth it out and that'll be [Music] good [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so I've been doing lots of work on this we've got um everything painted stained buffed and I did add some little feet I actually just drilled through these and added some feet and I added some color the bottoms will rub off but we'll be sealing everything um did paint the rested part here after giving a little scrub just some black and we're going to clear clo clear coat everything so I did order some Hardware off of Kennedy hardware and it'll be here this week hopefully but that piece is ready for Clear coats once it's dry and now onto the lid I've just been sanding these SL we'll do the same thing here there's a couple of tears and all I'm doing is adding some glue I want them to stay like that they look cool so the glue will just kind of hold the fibers down so they don't Fray and they can just stay there as a feature we will paint this all up as well and leave you know I'm not going to sand all of this off I'm going to leave it nice and rustic looking cuz we like that and then just dab on some black paint on this stuff and leave this one to dry too so um after clear coats I'm just going to Locker both of these a couple times and then smooth them out with some beeswax give it a little bit of a buff and then we will get on to papering so I did start yesterday or this weekend and that's just one of the side pieces for inside the lid so I do kind of pull it over the lip so when you see it sitting in there you'll see that lip it'll look nice and clean so I've got all these pieces numbered I know exactly where they go I started off using um a weird kind of wallpaper paste but I've used the gel before and it works a lot better the other stuff wasn't working for me so I picked up some gelled wallpaper paste and that'll work really good the other thing I did was seal all of the pieces with a coat of glue so that the cardboard doesn't soak up all of my adhesive when I go to put the paper on so those are all ready to go but I'm not going to put them in the trunk till we have the spraying and the coloring done so we don't mess them up and um then we can get it all put back together nice and hopefully the hardware is here by then hello well guess what just arrived my Hardware so that's awesome good timing I hate glue guns they're the worst so especially the upper Edge just going to get a nice line of glue and the lower Edge to hold down everything CU it is a bit popped up and then around these stay the side up I'm just going to push it down so that edges nicely flush with the wood of the trunk it's looking really nice though nice and clean you can use other glue to do this because hot mouth glue is a pain in the ass um but it works well in this application because the surface is really rough and not even so like using a Carpenters glue is not really a great idea I could use more wallpaper paste but it does dry out a lot and it um expands the paper cuz it's waterbased so you could use epoxy but that's an expensive way to go um something that would probably work really good is like a construction adhesive but then it's going to really be hard to rip off of this and probably take some wood with it not that the Hot Melt won't but usually it comes off pretty easy and you can heat it up pretty easy too so I'll keep going around let my gun catch up to me here and uh now that our Hardware is here I can start installing that and then finish up the [Music] paper okay you saw me using these nails these are big trunk nails that I order they're big backx steel nails and they're meant to be bent over and stuck back into wood so got the one half of the hinges in got this Hardware just came as we were filming so that's kind of perfect so let's see what I got here and this is some Kennedy Hardware I did order some of these brass Nails just to see if I want to use those but I think they'd be a little too shiny on the trunk so I'll keep those with those for later I ordered some natural handles that we're going to stain and wax and I ordered a couple different types of stays um these are the really flat ones okay uh sorry someone just came to the door again um so these hinges kind of like or or stay sorry they have a little Nick here so it opens up like that and then it hits that bump and if it goes farther it hits that little stain and then it's locked in so it doesn't go anywhere and slide back so those are kind of cool and they're very much traditional hinge type of stays and so are these um these are kind of like the swivel but I'm feeling like these are a little bit too lightweight I mean it's not a huge heavy trunk so they might be okay um and these have a little bit of a bump out so you it you don't need a washer there instead it just has it on the piece so it just kind of rides then stops it doesn't open a whole lot but it does click one more and then it's stopped so you just have to push a little bit harder kind of the same thing now tell it can't go back unless you really you know give it a little bit more pressure so I'm going to see which one looks best um it is not a very heavyweight one these might be the ones to use cuz these are a bit long they would be better on a bigger trunk anyways we'll decide that later the other thing um is this trunk had straps so I've ordered new straps oops some trunks had like leather straps that went around and they basically go around the whole thing and then on one side you have the little Buckle piece so sometimes you just have the little Buckle piece and sometimes you can wrap this whole thing around basically you could use a belt it's pretty much the same thing but it's a little bit more flexible leather so I'm going to see if we can replace the ones that are on there cuz they're broken and half of them are missing okay so you can see the old strap there that's broken uh this one is there and then it's broken underneath that slot so I would have to get those out um these guys here uh so basically this strap would go up over and through the slats that are behind here and get tucked in and stapled down here and then this one comes [Music] through here here goes around this one doesn't have a through cuz there's metal here so they can't put it on sorry metal here and then it goes through and then connects with another Buckle that should be right here so you can strap it down the front like you would with your latches but the whole other thing is that I'm not sure adding these straps back onto this piece is really going to give it any more character or if it's going to remove character these old straps that are left here and broken they tell a story and they give character whereas these shiny new leather straps you know with big brass buckles and looking brand new over this trunk they really don't tell a story so I might not even put these on at all and they don't really need them they're not going on Long Journeys with this trunk so I'm not really sure if doing any of that is really necessary so I'm probably not going to do it so forget that but it's kind of cool to see how it would go if I were to do it and the little slots that are in here are you know that's kind of cool to see those there I've seen trunks with just the straps over everything not integrated into the wood of the frame so it's a nice trunk um but I think we don't need to put those back on okay so now that we got that figured out um I'm going to get to dying these leather handles and I'm going to wax them with um a beeswax leather treatment here so I'm just going to use I need a glove uh some uh dye stain from Mohawk and these are like alcohol based dye stains penetrating ngr stains we are just going to do a nice even application this is raw Umber nice color it's a really nice Brown and we'll soak it into the side and the other ones that like they do sell ones that are treated but they're black and I didn't want black I wanted some brown leather and the raw side we just soak up [Music] lots so I'll just give it a few feeds until I can't see any more white same with the sides they're going to need a little few applications and these are double leather pieces sewn together and that's about the color I want don't want it perfectly dark I want to see some leather grain through there okay now that it's dry I'm going to get this hard wax oil on the whole thing let get it in everywhere good stuff and I'm going to take actually my buffing wheel and you'll notice I use the buffing wheel and I'm going to get wax in my buffing wheel to get the wax spread around and then for the edge I'm going to burnish it with the inside of this piece this hard piece and I'm not a leather worker but this is a quick way that I do this so I'll just show you the results I got all the stuff in and now I'm just going to turn it up and get to a shine all right so you can see see the difference with that nice burnished Edge versus the raw Edge that's got a lot of pieces and fuzz hanging out of it so that's it's just a quick burnishing I know that they sell little burnishing tools that I could get but this is going to be perfect for this application so I'll just do the rest of them like that okay so I've got my two handles burnished and I'm just flexing them around like you do with a new Bridal for a horse just to get that leather a little bit more Supple so now we got to think out putting this guy back on so I'm just going to Mark out they had two Nails in each handle I'm just going to kind of equally space this so then I'm just going to drill those out like I would would woodw just where my little marks [Applause] are and then I'm going to use another um I'm going to use these brass Nails under there to bend over cuz they're a little bit smaller and they're a little bit longer so I can get a good bend on the back of them so I'm just going to place them one at a [Music] time hopefully these holes line up and I'm going to leave a little bit of a crimp in the middle so it kind of sticks out a little bit and there we go nice and sturdy so I think for these nails I'll use my black ones cuz there's not any other brass on the whole other part of the cabinet so I like how these are all beat up and stuff that's why I kept them but you can order these exact same ones but they would have looked all new and weird on the cabinet and again we'll just bend them over in the back there we go looks nice looks like it's supposed to be there which is exactly what I'm going for so I'll do the other side and this piece and then we'll uh think about getting those hinges or the top back on with the hinges and there it is all finished up looking nice and rustic still but clean and usable so we did a little bit of a gold patina just a very slight patina on this type of Hardware here these pieces got a refinish very nice simple refinish we did repaint a lot of this stuff and the black put a little bit of paint on there's our new handles that we stained and waxed sorry I'm out of breath I just ran in here looks really good though the inside is a showstopper and it looks beautiful take a look at that we've got our piece back there that's helping the hinges to give them a little strength and it's nice and clean and able to store things got our um our stays on so the the lid stays up and yeah so it's looking really good and the other side we had to steal the metal from to make this piece we took that piece from the back and we added that little wood slat there and it kind of works with everything else that's going on so looks really good so thanks guys for joining me on this one this is a little piece that's been sitting in my shop for a long time and I'm happy to give it back to my friend today so thanks so much and if you want to support this channel you can buy me a coffee the link is in the description below this video and as always thank you so much for your kind comments and being part of this Community [Music] cheers [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: John's Furniture Repair

Views: 96,093

Keywords: trena, john's furniture repair, thomas johnson, antique restoration, furniture, shop, workshop, tools, stripping, spraying, sanding, woodworking, mohawk, walnut stain, table, festool, tiktok, at restoration, dewalt, bleach, this old house, beard meets food, kardashians, sympathetic restoration

Id: bSk9CAv6FkY

Length: 44min 8sec (2648 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023