This Table was a WRECK

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in gorm Maine many years ago a gentleman dropped this table off at my shop I don't think he wanted to see it back again uh I wrapped it up like this I put it in the storage it ended up in the barn what I always liked about this table from the first time I saw it were the legs I thought they were exceptional let's um let's take this tape off and see what we've got here oh jeez wow this thing's definitely been out in the weather that was easy somebody already detached this the bottom of the top is hand plane it's nice this piece goes here hand cut Dove Tails nice neat job too the bottom is rough saw solid wood it's unusual to have the grain running long ways like that I think we can assume that's the original knob it sure looks like it it's a nice turning like the legs I really like this negative space here and this is great pull out support for the leaves [Music] these screws tell us a lot you know they don't have pointed ends nice neat machine made threads but note that the shafts are not tapered also the heads of these screws are imperfect and handmade just the head is handmade there's lots of information online about old screws this is a good chart here and there's our screw right there 1820 to 1850 but it's the legs I'm most interested in okay let's look at the book this is the book I always start with I'm pretty sure it's an American table and tables it's hard to find furniture of this era pictured in these books all these books primarily deal with before 1830 but here you go here you're starting to see the legs they they call this a federal table 1790 to 1810 flipping through the pages I find a lot of these small tables which I always call work tables but they can be called a stand or anything but here you're seeing lots of legs similar to the legs on this table and all these pieces of furniture are you know 18 10 1820 somewhere in there so then I Google Sheridan Furniture I click on images and here's all kinds of examples of Sheran Furniture now don't assume that everything on these pages is true and correct scrolling down uh begin to see similar images you know here's our tables here that's great I like American country stand so as we know Sheran designed High style formal Furniture this table must have been built by his country cousin so it's called country Sheran really because of the design of the legs I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about the top exactly first thing I'm going to do is wash this down I want to see what it looks like clearly it's spent a lot of time Outdoors maybe years outdoors and then this kind of dirt and dust is years of being in a barn or a seller um let's see what we got here I'm going to use a 2 quarts of warm water that's a little less than 2 L and I'll add to that a 2 oz of crud cutter and that's a little less than uh say 60 milliliters I love the color and I love the variations and uh that's why I don't like to sand things you can't very difficult to recreate this I'm going to mix up some more solution I'll wash the drawer and the top I haven't decided about what I'm going to do about the top yet but I thought I'd uh wash it and think it over I can see the it's Birch of course I just realized all I have to do is turn it over yeah I think it's Birch yeah definitely it's beautiful color uh all hand pled you know I've never uh successfully gotten the a warp or twist out of any piece of wood I've tried many times nor have I heard of anybody nor do I know know anybody that's ever gotten a warp out of a piece of wood so I either need to cut this up rejoin it flatten it same with these boards or maybe I should make a whole new top um I'm going to go up to the barn look through my wood see what I got all right I knew in the back of my mind I had some uh nice Birch in the barn I this one particular piece is beautiful I bought this wood years ago to do a top with and that job never ended up not happening this board looks perfect I think I can get the whole top out of one board [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right let's see what we got all right it's uh starting to look like a tabletop so I'm belt sanding these pieces I didn't want to have to resort to that but this wood the uh Birch is so wavy I had a lot of chip out plus my thickness PL probably isn't what it should be and U this is the bottom of the leaf I'll show you you can see the chip out there it's when the grain the internal grain is changing directions the blade catches it and chips it yeah so once I get most of those chip outs at then I'm going to uh go at the top with a card scraper more on that later [Music] so after I belt sanded as much as I dare I'm using a card scraper I'm going over the top this my intention not to do any more sanding on this top I want to smooth the whole thing with the scraper I'm not trying to put in scraper I'm not trying to put in texture artificially but uh I'm hoping that some of it comes across from doing this by hand from this point forward [Applause] all right I've got the top scraped down pretty well the way I like it now I'm going to cut what's called a rule joint in these pieces and that's the joint where the leaves fold up I've got the router set up with a round over bit this is my sample board for setup I'll be cutting a joint just like that and this represents the center section of the drop leaf table there's a lot of good videos online I referred to this one for the Woodworkers Journal this morning before I started this I've got this fence set right where I want it so notice I've added some shims because I'll do this in uh multiple cuts [Music] [Music] now I'll use a Cove bit to cut the mating joint on the [Music] [Applause] [Music] leaf so I've made a uh on the table saw I made a template for the router to install the hinges I'm going to put double stick tape on the back of this template position it I've got it all marked out and uh route out for the hinge [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and so I still have to cut this hinge actually goes this way and I've got to cut a slot for this knuckle so that it'll sit down flush [Applause] it works now I never did cut the uh top to length because I wanted to wait until the leaves were attached [Applause] [Music] I'm anxious to fit that top on here but uh first I've got some gluing to do all the joints uh apparently are more to intened and then pegged the only obvious looseness is this dovetailed rail I wonder if that's the original finish some red paint this leg is spayed out but I think when this is glued in place that'll help keep it where it's supposed to be here you can see with this lower rail it's a double mortise and also Peg I always use uh hide glue old brown glue working with antiques it's a very very good adhesive probably compatible with the old glue I'm going to inject some into this glue joint I don't want to take it apart and lose that pay I think that either one or both of these side rails is Twisted kind of hard to see but these legs are kind of going One Direction these legs back legs are kind of going in that direction all right let's try it overnight all right I'm uh ready to start the finishing process you know when this when I was washing this and it was wet I really liked the way that it looked let's uh take a closer look I haven't done anything to this since I've washed it I intend to finish this with water loocks Varn and that's what I'm applying now I'm really liking the look of this and the color so now I need to color this new wood to resemble the old wood one of the problems with matching new wood to antiques is that that the antique didn't get this color brown by being stained it got that way we don't know how it got that way uh using stain on these woods so you may get a similar color but it has a totally different effect pigmented oil stains even Dy Stains have pigment in them but it's finely ground I'm going to use chemicals to change the color of this wood I want to apologize because I cannot tell you what those chemicals are because I don't know what they are I think it was in the late '90s a company came out selling these products uh I found they work great uh I read in wood shop news a few years later they were going to stop selling the product I went online to the U woodworker supply and bought uh quite a few bottles of this stuff it turns out it's going to last me long past my lifetime when using any water-based product on new wood it's necessary to uh wet the wood down first so last night off camera that's what I did I washed this down rinsed this down after drawing overnight it feels extremely fuzzy so we take a piece of very fine paper 220 and sand at a 45° angle just lightly to get those fibers off when you're preparing the wood you know fibers get pushed down in the grain when you wet it they swell raise up you don't want to sand with the grain and just push the fibers back down again you want to go at a 45° angle angle roll those fibers off and cut them following the directions me give it a quick just a little dampening here to help the solution distribute evenly now we let that uh first part dry completely uh and then we apply part two all right these have dried for about 4 hours now I'm going to uh spray them again this time with part two the Catalyst solution uh color change doesn't happen instantaneously I'll set the over here and we'll see what happens okay I'll do a little time lapse here it's been about uh 10 11 minutes uh it'd be nice if it stopped right here it looks good so anyway we'll find out find out tomorrow all right uh these have dried overnight you know you can never look at stain when it's dried like this and tell what it's going to look like we won't know till I put some finish on it so I'll uh C the bottom of one of the leaves and we'll see what it looks like the color looks good I think I'm going to go ahead and coat all this and put a coat on the table base yeah it looks great the first like this really soaking in quickly it's been uh just about 20 hours uh everything's dried nicely that first coat soaked in so quickly and so completely that last night after dinner I came in and just gave it a second coat it's got enough fill that I can sand it with some 220 free Cut gold and then I'll give it another coat the base I'll go over with Scotch breite pads and give it another coat and color is looking good [Music] [Music] okay I've left this dry over two nights actually so now I'm going to rub this down with some steel wool and polish and uh and of course I'm going to assemble it I think I should attach the table base before I put the leaves on the top was originally attached with h four screws going through here note how difficult it is to get this screw through there I'm guessing these screws are original they're definitely the right period Circa 1830 so even though I'm not wild about this system I want to reuse these screws like I said these screws barely can even go through the holes which I've got to do something to correct that so not only am I going to drill this hole to make it larger I'm also going to go back and forth like this to elongate the hole perpendicular to the brain of the tabletop now the screw can move freely through the hole and also the screw can move back and forth hopefully that's enough to allow for wood movement up the top I might even elongate that a little bit more unfort fortunately now I only have these Phillips head screws and I've uh but I've ordered slotted screws when they come I'll need to take this apart and see if I can change the color of all this galvanized steel I wanted to have the top off the table base to uh rub it out typically I like a little bit more finish on a tabletop this has three coats but I like it I'm going to rub it out with steel wool and uh Howard's feed and wax I wanted to keep it looking kind of rustic I think you can see here uh the texture that I wanted to achieve by just scraping even some little uh minor defects I left all that I didn't want this top to be perfectly flat I'm going to go over with dry steel wool this is a 4 and then I'm going to go over it with steel wool and polish now I'll take a fresh piece of steel wool and I'm going to apply uh to the steel wool in the tabletop uh this Howard's feeding wax Orange Oil and Beeswax polish the table base gets uh similar treatment no dry steel wool I'll go straight to the steel wool and polish all I did was wash this and put three coats of varnish on it well there you go nice little antique table or used to be an antique has a brand new top uh luckily we saved the base the top was really Beyond saving I don't like doing major Renovations like this I was lucky enough to get some nice Birch for the job uh it's difficult to work with but uh I managed I did not sand the top I scraped it only trying to get a little texture there's different defects to the top that I just uh left alone here was a big check in the wood I mean I glued it and filled it in but I didn't worry about it I was calling it so tight on the width I wanted to get a whole top out of one board I uh ran out over here and I left it anyway on the underside of the leaf the top has great color because I used a chemical stain instead of a pigmented stain it's uh much more varied plus the method of application I use which was lousy with a spray bottle though gave it a variation also the drawer works great off camera I took it apart reglued it I even had the belt sand the sides it wasn't about to go back in there you know this is just a simple provincial table but I'm really glad I saved this table base it may be provincial but whoever turned those legs really knew what they were doing I've got about 24 hours just in making the top maybe a total of 24 hours in the entire job I use a thickness planer the table saw the jointer and these hand tools and materials I think it looks pretty good for

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 162,331

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

Id: c_7WIlkJmBs

Length: 32min 22sec (1942 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024