Will This Antique Lady Ever Stand Up Again? - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

[Music] i'm tom johnson thomas johnson antique furniture restoration in gorham maine this is a nice ladies writing desk that's what we've always called them it's probably from the early 20th century maybe 1920 or so it's got this applied carving very much like lake victorian oak furniture but this piece is made of mahogany and it's got a few problems with it for instance this gallery is broken it has these lid supports come out automatically with the mechanism and they're a little step [Music] there you go some of these pieces have come off these decorative pieces but you've got them all they all came with it so they just need to be glued back the legs are loose at least this one probably another one too and then the finish it's really kind of rough looking this one particular side is really bad we'll have to see what we can do about that so first thing i want to do is take the drawer out and then i want to remove this lid you know i'm having second thoughts about taking these hinges off i've worked on these before usually there's exposed screws in this area here this one doesn't have it the screws are way down there inside this thing there's a little screw down in there and i'm sure there's more along here and see there's another screw way down in there i suspect that if you took these pigeon holes out of here we might get some more accessible screws underneath of that yeah i think i'm going to leave this attached for now and you know i can see that there's stuff caught up in here and obviously that's why it didn't work correctly so maybe i can clean these out lubricate them and uh and it'll work fine i'm going to try that first anyway i think i should work on these hinges first get them working correctly because that makes a difference whether or not i need to remove this litter so i better find that out first right off the bat you can see some of these papers and stuff that are pieces of paper that are stuck down in there maybe i can pull them out here's where the the hinge connects to a lever on these lid supports i'm going to take those off that'll allow me to lubricate the lid supports and maybe give a clue as to what's hanging this thing up yeah you can see that this see moves with difficulty and that's a good sign and uh because i can lubricate this up and see what's happening here right off the bat you can see there's a piece of felt here that's loose and that's hanging it up at some point here maybe even there too see it doesn't want to close so there's an extra layer of felt here and that part is coming up i think i'll just trim that off and then wax everything up and see how it works this side runs against the side of the cabinet which i'll wax also all these spots and drips are indicative that possibly this has been refinished before oh yeah that works freely now so i'll do the same thing to the other support and we'll see how things work i'm guessing that the hinges i still need to lubricate them and clean them out maybe with some compressed air all right lid sports are out oh man okay something's hanging up funny something stopped it right about there but then it now it's working free up there it goes i gotta find out what is happening right there i don't think that's a pretty good wad of paper maybe i didn't think the paper is causing this to happen but maybe it is getting that paper out seems to have really helped uh boy i hope that was the problem [Music] boy that really helped it's moving quite freely now and i still just want to give it a speck of lubricant so before i put this back on the bench to reconnect the lid supports and start working on the legs i want to remove this broken piece of the gallery yeah these are connected i have to take off the entire gallery here good they're not glued or anything oh man all right now we can work on his legs so yeah these legs are really loose like all except one there's a lot of stuff going on here they've all got these big plugs or dowels i don't know what they are we're gonna have to figure that out you can see down here that we got nails these same big plugs which look like they are dowels because one of them's sticking through right there at an angle that's gonna be bad i think i think what i'm seeing here i don't know if you can see it the original dowels i'll get some wedges see if these two dowels which i suspect were added are angled which they most probably are it's going to be trouble getting this thing off now you can see the original dowels my guess is there's there's three dowels going straight up in here i still haven't seen those diagonal dowels yet i don't know where they got off to it really feels like it wants to come off but it won't and that's those daggone diagonal dowels well i don't see oh them i think i do ah this is interesting to me you know it appears but there's only one dowel originally here's your two diagonal dowels i've worked on a lot of furniture uh from this era and i would say that every one of setups like this almost always had three dials or they'd have one large dowel with two screws going through these knee blocks this one appears to have only been dialed originally with a single dowel seems funny to me they're just not giving us much to work with here i'm what i'm thinking right now is i just glue this back the way that it was and then i'm going to add some screws out here out on these blocks going straight into the piece to help give it some stability so everything's not in the center here i just don't think there's much else i can do i'll uh start by taking off the other leg and thinking about it this is the one leg seems secure so we'll leave that alone but we'll keep an eye on it i'll try this one i'm seeing some daylight through there maybe i can get a wedge down in there [Music] boy what a mess especially this area here where this board there's a piece of it attached to the leg but not everything once again not sure the best way to go here but uh in the meantime i'll get this leg off and keep thinking about it [Music] i think the first thing i need to do is glue this board back into place it's mortise and tenon into the frame you can see the big gap here and so what i need to do is detach this board from the back which is this board here and re-glue it into place this side and the other side looks awful tight it might be glued to the back boy i don't think i don't think these boards are going to separate you know i'm thinking that i can back these two boards out together you know that this rail is solidly attached to this back the back solid wood oddly enough it's very unusual uh and it's cracked due to shrinkage it's only got like one nail holding this in maybe i can back it out and then glue it back where it's supposed to go so all right so the first thing i'll do is is glue up these splinter bits i'm using hide glue here but for breaks like these any any water soluble glue you know regular carpenter's glue would work fine okay okay as we're waiting for those to dry we can glue up this top gallery piece okay this piece has been in clamps for a couple hours uh i think we can i think i could take the clamps off and glue it back i want to be sure there's pressure on the tenant in there all right tomorrow we'll glue the legs on so this seems really solid now now because these dowels were drilled at an angle i can't put it back on with the dowels there i have to drill those out or knock them out glue the leg and then put them back again now the thought just occurred to me i've got i can reuse these dowels this one's not giving it up like the others maybe i'll i'm gonna apply some heat to it i need to at least get this uh chunk of wood off intact [Applause] no no it's not gonna go so so you so so good so so so so the diagonals are off by maybe 3 16 of an inch or so so the diagonal measurements are slightly off but i am the legs are all solid up against the frame here i think that the diagonals are close enough everything looks fine everything's exactly where it's supposed to be so i'm gonna leave that alone so all right now i can start gluing down the little uh scroll pieces in here all these other pieces belong to another piece of furniture i'll be sure to get them back these spring clamps have adjustable tension which is fantastic for small pieces like this i can't clamp this one i think i just have to hold it i'll hold it for a few minutes until it seems to grab yeah it's already grabbing and the third one okay gonna let all this dry overnight wait these uh these legs seem rock solid so now i'm going to reinstall these dowels oh i just realized this is the one without a number that dow broke but either new down here to use for this so all right i'm going to wait to touch things up here until tomorrow i want to let the glue dry okay we've got a few issues with the finish here i think i'm going to start the with this damage to the front these are all applied carvings i guess they're applied they look great and this area here has been been scraped and there's some wood missing but it's so little i don't know if i can actually replace it with putty or anything i'm going to try sanding this this damaged area with some very fine paper some 220 and just see if i can smooth it out this is actually uh these areas are smoothing up better than i even thought they would so i'm going to try putting a light stain on these areas so i'm going to take some perfect brown dye stain thin it out with alcohol so i thinned this out like two-thirds alcohol one-third stain somewhat imprecise that's what i'm worried about it being too dark you know because these areas are not perfectly smooth that's not bad i think it'll work it's drying a little lighter than it looks at first so i think it's going to work maybe i'll even try this these spots on either side where it hits the support okay i'm gonna let all that dry for a while i'm gonna rig up a bench so we can turn it on its side i want to start with this side this is by far the worst area [Music] so the first step uh always is to clean so i'm going to take a a nice rag and just spritz a little crud cutter on it and try patting it boy that looks great this area may need a little of that stain obviously this cleaner being water-based should take care of this hide glue i may have to just soak it a little bit more with plain water i'll stick with the plain water here just to get this glue off okay back to the crud cutter so boy i'm really uh happy about the way that this cleaned up it looked really good i'm gonna put some stain in these raw areas and take care of this touch up and then do the same treatment to the rest of the desk those flush cut saws the teeth are so fine i think this one should do better i gotta fill those gaps stain's a little light but i'll just that's good i'll just go back over it a couple times that's the uh that's the nice thing about dye stains is that you can you know go back and apply more stain and make the area darker and darker bring it in to where you want it because the worst thing that could happen is that your area get too dark and then if these are still a little too light i can tone them a bit with the aerosol toner this side of the cabinet's a lot better than the other side i mean it has as the entire piece is better than the other side but i'll go over it with the cleaner just the same very little touch up on this side uh taking these uh gallery supports off reminds me i still have to i glued the long piece together i've still got to get the glue off that and touch it up i'm hoping you can see the little water marks all throughout here and how they're going away as i pad with the cleaner this brush is just slightly damp with the cleaner i'm leaving both discussions on for now and what you see here is the original color except it is awfully red but i noticed the same thing about the drawers inside i got to clean up this is the top piece of the gallery i got to clean it up it's got lots of glue on it and i might have to fill these cracks a little bit i just use plain water to get the glue off i have to work it a little bit these are the two side pieces of the gallery oh i still gotta take care of my uh my touch up here [Music] i was thinking that i might just wax this but um i'm a little concerned about this area this was pretty raw i think i'll uh french polish it a little bit with some lubricite so and while i'm at it i might as well do this side i'll just be a little bit better about sealing this in a bit before i wax it you know i'm not trying to like french polish this up to a high sheen or anything because this side was so raw i was afraid the wax might just soak right into it and so i'm hoping that this well i know this will help seal it off a bit all right let's give it a try all right i'm gonna go uh eat lunch and then come back and buff this okay let's uh let's see how it buffs up yeah it seems to uh it's got a nice sheen to it now i wouldn't mind if the sheen was a little higher i may let this dry until tomorrow and uh and wax it again see if i can bring the sheen up a bit but it looks good especially compared to what it looked like starting off so i'm going to go ahead and proceed to wax the rest of it [Music] oh i almost forgot i i wanted those raw areas that i stained i wanted to put a little shellac on them and seal them off all right i'll just continue waxing the rest of the desk while that dries so so so so there's a small defect here sanding it very lightly with a little 220. a little stain seal it with some shellac and a piece of yellow tape so don't forget the interior is in good shape but it has tons of minor scratches and dings all over it i'm going to wipe it off wipe it out with a damp rag and then i'm going to use a old english scratch cover on it i've left the scratch cover on for an hour or so and now i'll wipe it out with a paper towel so i'll go over it with the same guild boys wax just with a rag i already used steel wool on it oh i don't want to forget about our gallery pieces here this crack i just want to fill in with this pencil a wax stick rather and i'll use the same gill boys wax you there it goes well there it is a really nice ladies writing desk probably from the early part of the 20th century as solid mahogany if you remember when it came in the gallery was broken the lid wouldn't open at all and this reminds me i didn't repair the lock and i want to find just a dummy key to fit in there as a pull this side was really bad shape but it cleaned up and waxed up fine and of course the legs it was really wobbly and they re-glued three of the legs one was okay i think it looks pretty good you

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 74,883

Rating: 4.9551234 out of 5

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

Id: TTmCMRVSplw

Length: 53min 35sec (3215 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021