The Chest

Over the past five years or so, we taken on more repairs and restoration of worthy antiques for the folks in our area .... It's great work on a number of levels: it's a break from the routine; it gives us a chance to be heroes by saving or polishing items of, in some cases, extreme sentimental value; it's a quick project rather than something you work on for days or weeks ; and the work is often challenging and thought provoking. We've learned to try to 'do no harm' by doing as little as possible to get things back in shape. Over the last year and a half we have had the good fortune to work with a couple who suffered a pretty serious fire and have learned many techniques for cleaning smoke damaged furniture . The star of this post I have written about before. The client had it for a long time, having chosen it when his late grandmother's possessions were divied up.
Here's the only shot of it I have pre-cleaning ...
Here I'm about to start on the touch up ... We talked to about a million people about this piece ... It's old; as far as we could tell, no one has ever messed with the paintings; it's important to the client ... he got it from his grandmother and, though it's hard to photograph, in person you can clearly see his name (Chinn) and the date 1706, a year his ancestor married and built a large home in Virginia that still stands today. So, is it possible this chest has passed down on the male side of his family for over 300 years???? The client was floored when we found this. One dealer I spoke with felt maybe it was not quite that old....Others were not so sure ... Regardless, it was now an important family piece for sure ...
I have lightened the photo and changed the contrast, but here it is.... there are other writings on two of the other panels, but they are not as easy to translate.
Another view of it ...
After testing a small area of the paint (for about the third or fourth time), with a white paper towel and denatured alcohol, we rub coated the first panel with 'sealcoat', a dewaxed shellac.
That provided a barrier coat and I built and blended on top of that with three colors of latex paint on the same brush at the same time ... I often use this technique when recoloring antique finishes ...
dab it on ... smush it around and redab ... if you go too far, which I did a couple of times on this project, the barrier shellac coat allows you to 'erase' your mistakes by rubbing with alcohol to go back to the beginning ... recoat over the color when you're happy ..
I guess 'blot' is the right word. You kind of pounce it with a smushed up paper towel until it looks right.
The first end panel retouched ... note the difference between the side base and the front ...
Here the front is retouched on the right, but untouched on the left ...
The 'Chinn' end ..
The top looked like it might be a challenge, but we cruised through it to wrap it up ... When I delivered it yesterday, the client said it now looked better than it did before the fire, a high compliment for sure ...

For more information on our work repairing and restoring worthy antiques, see this link here... Or for two of our finest saves ... this link ...

Sam's Railing's Done

All in, all done ... Sam and Jim wrapped it up today with a little more on site bolting and welding .... I'd like to see it in person before the folks move in though Sam's pictures came out well considering what a sunny house it is ... I think he's happy it all fit and it's all done, and the biuilder came by with the check this afternoon ... My kind of client .... Onward ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
Up the steps ...
Top of the steps ...
Ditto ...
Down the steps
Sam's secret, super special, leopard skin finish ... very cool
Next !

Sam's Railing

Sam is coming down the home stretch on a big railing project he's been working on for a while now. The first section went in before the holidays and the second section went in yesterday ... The last section that goes down the steps in the photo above has been templated , the parts are completed, and welding on that section will start tomorrow ... Click the photos to enlarge them.
The first step was to make a full size template on site.
The post fabrication is sort of technical and fussy but very effective and rigid when installed .
Then back to the fabrication department above ..
There was a little on site welding ...
And then, back to the shop for the last section that goes down the steps in the photo above ....
The main balcony section is a long one ..... 20' or so and solid as a rock ...
Looks good from below, too ...

The Bureau Is Finished

Well, all is not mdf here even though it may look like it in my most recent post ... Will finished up the double bureau yesterday and as I suspected, the cherry is spectacular ... This is my first photo session with my new lights and I think I can do better. The cherry seems kind of 'cool' compared to the real thing ... It's still set up so I've got all weekend ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
this was a hard piece to photograph with all the 'action' in the wood grain ... i took the one above recently and it looks like we could call it 'bee's wing cherry'.
It's interesting to see how the design evolved as we progressed. If you check the cad drawing in the previous post (linked above) you'll see we started out with the legs pointing in the opposite direction, which is the way we've always used them as table legs. in this case, when we were waving them around before they were attached, inverting them seemed to give the bureau more connection and a 'better' feeling .... The cherry was soooooo nice, we debated the hardware choice until the very last minute ... In the end, we didn't want to 'clutter' the look of the piece and Sam is in the middle of a big railing project anyway ... So, brainstorm, imho ... continue the bolt theme with lag bolt pulls ... There was some concern about getting them installed exactly perpendicular, so we made the jig below. First we drilled the guide holes on the drill press, marked out the centers, stuck the brad point drill through into the center mark, pushed the wood guide firmly against the drawer face and drilled the pilot hole. Next we put a longer lag through the wood guide block and screwed it home. That created the perpendicular threading for the actual, shorter pulls which we installed by hand in the precut threads ... there are four 1/8" thick carpet glides on the back of the jig to protect the finished drawer face while in use ...
Below is a close up of the metal finish on the legs ... The angle iron was dynabraded (rotary air sander) with 80 grit and 120 grit. next it was treated with a chemical called ‘ready brown’ from Sur-Fin Chemicals that works on brass and steel to quickly darken it to a brown black color. After treatment it was neutralized with a solution of baking soda and water, sanded again to add highlights, and top coated with ben moore ‘high gloss, low lustre’ metal finish … sounds complicated, but isn’t …
Great job Will and Sam ....

MDF Is .....

Commenting Assignment ..... MDF (see post below) is:

* The Killer App
* The Devil's Right Hand
* Never Touch the Stuff
* The Shakers Would Have Loved It
* Maybe, Maybe Not
* A Slippery Slope From Which There Is No Return
* Has No Place In "Fine" Furniture

Discuss ....

MDF ... More Done Faster

MDF ... Stands for a lot of things in our shop ... Technically, the trade name is medium density fiberboard ... other possibilities are More Done Faster, More Done For less and More Dust Forever ...

We were slow and resistant on the uptake for sure, but have come grudgingly to admire it's many fine qualities such as flat, cheap, stable (or at least more stable than a lot of other materials), great for quick mockups and models, great veneer substrate, machines very well, relatively strong, paints great, did I mention flat and cheap? Anyway, I forget how we were first introduced to it but I know we hated the dust and the fact that it wasn't 'real wood'. The dust is much less annoying than it used to be as we are now much more careful to capture it at the source and, unless it's my imagination, the dust has become less corrosive and irritating than say most zebrawood and rosewood, some mahoganies, and the merado I was cutting on the bandsaw today. That one caused Trevor, who was working 10' away to come over and open the damper on the bandsaw where I was cutting chair legs.
But it's a great thing to be able to mockup a chair like the ones above before you build them out of solid wood ... Click the photo above and enlarge it and you'll see some lounge chairs. One is solid mahogany and two are painted mdf with sold wood arms ... Can you tell which is the real wood chair? Didn't think so ... Also in that photo, there is a painted mdf sculpture, and a round mahogany table with a painted mdf base that started out as a pool table leg mockup ...
Recently I was asked to make some furniture for a client's guest house. Since they already have several of my solid mahogany lounge chairs, they asked us to create a couch version. I wanted to replace a loveseat in my house that I made from a previous mockup about 10 years ago, so I used their request to explore the concept in mdf .. It seemed to work so well that I suggested the guest house couch be made the same way. Because of the reduced cost, they ordered two couches and two chairs ... Not a problem for me ... The tapered thing in front, was an idea that occurred to me as a reading lamp and what the hey, we'll make an mdf one of those too while were at it ... No problem ... You can see the finished lamp and the round mahogany table base better in the top photo.
Trevor added the poplar seat support frames and the upholsterer came by to measure for cushions today ... we'll start the painting and finish the solid wood arms tomorrow ...
We also had a request for an unusual mirror frame ... I couldn't figure out how to work around the short grain and narrow frame joinery/clamping issue and since it was going to be gold leafed, hey we'll try that in mdf too ... Gold leafed mdf... I love that concept ... Now if I can just get the mirror cut .... We talked to our waterjet guy today and it may come to that ... Waiting for quotes ...
The mdf takes a nice detail for shadows on the 1.5" frame.
The 1/4" mirror pattern was nice and flat too ...
And then, over at the big island house they needed a custom pair of tall closet doors. The other 30 or so doors in the house were made by the TruStile Doors folks, entirely in mdf with some poplar edge inserts, but their lead time was 5 weeks so we were called on to the job ... it went way better than I thought and the doors were flat, square and true when we were done ... Since they meet in the middle with no center stile, they probably have a better chance of staying in alignment than a pair of poplar doors would ...
Below we're gluing up the stiles and rails using titebond II .. quick and easy, and did I mention flat?...
And lastly in this post on MDF, I'll link to our previous posts on display fixtures and the beauty of mdf for creating those .... Literally, we couldn't do those jobs without it ... Wagathas dog biscuit racks ... made over a hundred of those already .. and our not quite patented Vew-Do balance board racks ....

A 'Bethlehem Steel' Bureau

I'm sort of fascinated by the wood and steel elements of our newish 'Bethlehem Steel' line. We have been working on it for about a year now and this is the first case piece ... There just seem to be endless possibilities here ... This one started with the drawing above, but as we were building it, even though all the other tables in this style so far have had the legs pointing down, this piece definitely seemed to want it's legs inverted, pointing up. OK, we'll listen. We turned them over and the results are below. More anchored to the ground, but yet lighter feeling at the same time .... Sometimes you can figure things out in the drawings, but sometimes you have to let your instincts take over .... The piece, to us at least, seems to be stronger and more solid in this configuration ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
The case with side shims and full extension undermount runners ... It's the first time we tried the Grass runners ... So far so good ... They seem to wobble a bit less when you open and close them , and close a little faster than the Blums ... Cheaper too from our supplier ... The high dolly was a brainstorm too ... Hate, hate, hate crawling around on the floor ...
Mocking up the bolts with masking tape .. three holes or four ?? Three it is ...
More bolts in the front center leg ... This is some of Irion's finest figured cherry .. I've had this log for several years waiting for the right project ... We had Just enough to make it ...