Steamer Trunk Restoration - Hearthside Woodworks - Ep 1

hey i'm isaac with heartside woodworks today i'll be working on a pirate's chest full of gold and old bones so today's project is actually a late 19th century steamer trunk when it first came into the shop i initially thought that it might be a stagecoach trunk but as i got into it more there's a clue as to why that's not the case and i'll show you here in a minute so you'll be able to see as i open this up the interior has definitely definitely been used it does look a little rough but it's it's still in in good structural shape you can see where there used to be a tray sitting up on on top of this um and that unfortunately is long gone but definitely have our work cut out for us this is really a very cool looking steamer trunk i really like the lines of it i really like the patina my client doesn't want me to completely restore this to look brand new and that is like the best thing i prefer to do what i call a refresh on pieces like this and it really is maintaining the the age and the patina of it really just kind of brighten it up and making it look a little nicer a little cleaner and even make it not smell at first i thought maybe this was going to be leather and while it may have been it also at this point it feels more like like a tar paper material but you know pieces like this uh you know they're they're just it's just but look at the detail on the on the tin work that's really cool and so for the most part this is just going to be cleaning up and and getting some finished material on it to help seal the wood up really pop the the colors and the tones that are already here and just make it a usable trunk form another thing i'm going to have to do is you can see these handles are gone and these of course were a very thick very sturdy leather at some point but it's it's not uncommon for these to come into the shop with no handles so hopefully i can find somebody local to reproduce these for me if not i've always got the internet but this is a cool little detail that i actually haven't seen on any other trunk that i've worked on are these anchors on the handle brackets i just think that's really cool real quickly i thought i would show you a trunk that is not as good a condition as the one i'm about to start on this is the bottom and i can include maybe i'll throw in a couple of pictures of what this used to look like and you can see the interior of it is actually in really rough shape too so i'm going to be replacing this whole bottom side and then basically doing a similar concept or a similar kind of restoration on this one as the one that i'm working on but i just thought i'd show you what a really bad one would look like too remember some of these stains and things like this uh it's actually something that my client wants to leave to kind of show the the age of the piece and kind of what it's been through which is actually pretty cool so next step is re-gluing all of this old fabric back down to the inside of this lid and actually though the whole piece is this lid is going to be a lot harder to do there's more to it but that's basically the next step [Music] so [Music] [Music] so there's still some remaining material around each one of these panels but not all of it is salvageable it's you know it's really in rough shape and all it's going to do if i try to yeah that just that just powdered in my hands uh if i try to save this kind of fasten it down and then finish over the top of it you know chances are probably pretty good that it's all just going to flake off and come out anyway so the pieces that are in good shape i'll go ahead and leave but for the most part i think the vast majority of this is going to have to be removed yeah it's just total it's toast so unfortunately a lot of this will have to be cut out and cleaned out and i think in the long run it will look better [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so the rest of the material is taken off the front i spared you the details with that it was bad it's just anyway i was able to leave one small corner it looks like there's like a sunburst like rays of the sun coming from whatever was here in the center i'm gonna leave it because it's in good shape it's connected here and here it's laying down nicely and i'm hoping that also it leaves just enough of a clue to maybe find out what company made this trunk so anyway so i was able to leave a little bit which i'm happy with the next step is actually going over the entire piece with some dry 4-odd steel wool and all that's going to do is help to remove some of the surface rust i want to leave some of the age and some of the the patina i mean that's that's part of the coolness of this pirate chest steamer trunk you see you don't want to go too far with it so i'm not going to [Music] all right now fast forward a bit i always get to this point of the project where i get one portion of it done and i just can't help myself i have to i have to try a little finish work you can see very clearly the difference between this section and and all i really did is vacuumed everything down and then this whole section is actually coated in dewax shellac uh dewak shellac is a universal binder it's a sanding sealer uh as far as woodworking goes uh dwack shellac will go over any existing finish at least you know maybe a little bit of prep some sanding to do whatever but you can put it on pretty much anything and then the cool thing is that any finish that you want will actually go over the top of dwack shellac and stick to it which is really great my client would really like this to be a usable piece but also something that's nice enough to show yeah i'm not sure where she wants to put it but dwack shellac or shellac really in general is is kind of a high gloss material it's just naturally that way which isn't really something you always want so what i'm going to do is after i get everything done i get the whole piece shellacked i think what i'll then do is shoot it with some satin lacquer it should look pretty good glue's drying so i've gone ahead and finished cleaning the entire outside it turned out really good i'm happy with the way that it's cleaned up and i've actually gone ahead and sealed the whole inside of this lid it actually already is smelling way better than it was before i have also fabricated these little blocks these little corner blocks out of oak i've got some separation right here on this top corner and just a little bit on this top corner and i'm not happy with it these corners are actually pretty solid i mean there's a little bit of movement but so i want to repair the structure to make it more stable but i don't want to interfere with any of this this tin work on the outside these blocks are actually the same dimensions as these of these two rails where the old tray used to sit so what i'm doing are these corner blocks are actually going to go in the corner and they're going to get glued and i've got these cabinet screws as well and these blocks they're really going to help out a lot to stabilize the entire piece they're just standard red oak nothing crazy nothing super amazing but very strong and that should really help tighten this entire piece up and that is a good thing and of course i don't have a rag we're safe come here there we go i don't know what it is whenever i start gluing i never seem to have a rag half the tools or any of my clamps anywhere around me i've been doing this for a long time i haven't learned yet this one's going to be trickier because i can't get in anyway there we go please don't jump and hit my finger please don't jump and hit my finger okay so i use the sand [Music] here we go all right i'm pretty much just gonna do the same thing to this side then i always use a chisel to flatten out any blowouts fibers sticking out of my drilled holes that's annoying [Music] and you might be thinking to yourself screws and glue might be an overkill and maybe you're right however antiques are still around because they were overbuilt and i would rather overbuild not to excess but i'd always prefer to add just a little extra to make my stuff last because that matters to me of course you can you can go overboard but i don't find this going to be overboard [Applause] no no don't do that always there's always one i'll have to mess with that in a second let's get this other one put up nope there we go come on you just you'd get in there that's what we're looking for now i have to pull this one back bar clamp how how how are you doing that you just pushed against a bar clamp i'm not even mad i'm impressed let's this guy might oh yeah that one's toast all right let's try this hey here we go i'm to go ahead and leave this clamp on because [Laughter] so it's the next day and i've got the steamer trunk balanced precariously on this stool i completely finished the inside last night and it's still curing and if i try to open this up and show you the whole thing it falls off the stool so that'll have to wait for some other time but what i'm going to do now as it's i'm going to work on getting some of this tin fixed there's some places in it that it's it just needs to be fixed [Music] so here we are everything has been cleaned wire-brushed steel-wooled sanded re-cleaned vacuumed twice and everything is nice and soft to the touch and that's exactly what we're looking for and so now i get to start finishing [Music] all right first coat is done it's actually the top is already dry to the touch this product dries really really fast but i'm gonna let this dry for the night uh come in first thing tomorrow morning go over the top of this with uh like a 3m pad just to kind of knock off any rough edges and then put on a second coat and hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow i'll be spraying the satin lacquer so see in the morning so it's about two o'clock the next day i started the morning basically doing three more coats of exactly what i did yesterday and i applied the final coat on the interior which i decided on a water-based acrylic in satin brought that shine down makes it look a little nicer it's it's a great product i really like it and it's going to work great for this so the interior as far as the finish work is done on the outside like i said i put a couple more coats i did more coats on these rails i'm using a tinted version to kind of help set these these components apart so they don't all blend in and look like one one unit so the next step is to apply the satin lacquer i thought about filming it and i think i will eventually in some other video but this time i think i'm just gonna turn the cameras off and go for it lacquer is a great product but it's pretty toxic stuff when you spray it which is what i'm going to do it dries really quickly so even when it's in the air it dries and it creates this dust that just goes everywhere and i'm masked up and i really don't want to have my filming equipment out and get that i'll dig covered in lacquer dust so i'm not going to do that so what i'll do is i'll go ahead and spray this and when it's all dry i'll jump back with you so the final coat on the trunk is drying i just brought it in from outside where i sprayed it and it's looking really good you'll see it here in a minute where i took these handle brackets and i took a soft wire brush to them and cleaned them up and then i shot them also with some of that satin lacquer and i think they turned out really nice i'm not sure if you can see they still have you know some rusty spots and again it's that look of aged antique i mean that's what we're looking for so i'm happy with those and these are the new handles really good quality leather nicely stitched double layer they're just exactly like they were originally and i think they're going to look really nice so the top coat on the chest is dry i've already installed the handle on the other side all that's left is to install the [Music] side [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] we did it we all have successfully survived the very first episode of hearthside woodworks i'd like to thank my clients for giving me the opportunity to work on this old trunk and i'd like to thank you for watching i'll see on the next one you

Channel: Hearthside Woodworks

Views: 47,734

Keywords: Steamer Trunk, Restoration, Hearthside, Woodworks, Woodworking, Pirate Chest, Antique, furniture refinishing, antique restoration, antique trunk

Id: 7CPMHGRslC8

Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021