repairs, and why we like them

above from the book 'the craftsman' by richard sennet 

i've been catching up on my reading lately ...

click the photos to enlarge them

so, last week i had a small run of repairs,

bringing things back to useful life

i got the chair in the first photo above with the missing parts

in a nice cloth grocery bag .. first step was to reglue

the backsplat and get it ready to re install

here it is, all set to go ... 

this was what i refer to as a 'functional restoration'

where the object is reassembled using the guide line

'if it doesn't make sense financially to fix it correctly. fix it any way you can'.

a 'proper' restoration was not financially feasible, yet the repairs

i did here will extend the chair's life, (barring catastrophe), for the foreseeable future.

and then something comes in the door that just blows you away

yowza!

details, detail, details ... nice black mother of pearl in the peacock's tail

and i love the details on the metalwork .. that alone probably took a couple of minutes

the client inherited this chest from her aunt who collected 

chinese 'stuff' .... i can't imagine who commissioned this one ...

and let's not neglect the back ... i think they threw the 

angles and curves in just for fun ... 

another painted chest required some adjustment and repair to 

the little stubby legs, which may or may not have been original .. 

FUNKY CHAIR !! obviously a green wood construction

check the warp on that seat .. quite a twist!..

point of interest here, after cutting off the front leg a bit to relevel it,
i noticed that the leg was turned from what appears to be a branch, with
the heart included in the turning .. never saw that before .. my guess is circa 1800.

better view of the warped seat

note the fact that the left leg in the rear and the opposite leg in the front
were shortened by at least an inch each .. 

and then we get to my friend Tom's 'music chair'
which he has been sitting in to play his guitar for a good portion of his recent life.
when it arrived, it had three snapped off tenons, one on the top of a leg, two stretcher ends,
and a long spit in the center stretcher ...

the leg top i was able to drill for a 5/8th" oak dowel new tenon, but the stretchers
required turned and scarfed on new tenons with small screws reinforcing the joints
from the bottom of the stretchers.  tom's my age, the chair's quite a bit older,
and we'll see how it goes.  i am hopeful ...

and below, from a previous restoration blog post i wrote a few years ago about repairs ..
that blog post has a link to a new yorker article on
the conservation studio at the new whitney museum ...
the new yorker article is a thought provoking read on art and time passing ...

yes, we do repairs

i've always felt that a craftsman should fix stuff.  particularly stuff that is important to people who really like the stuff that is broken.  it might be a family piece, like this one, and have sentimental value, or it could be just a nice piece of furniture with a problem here or there, looking for the good life.  also, as a 

craftsperson, where else are you going to get to work on pieces like this one if you automatically just say

"i don't do repairs"  .. i mean, check this out .. fantastic unrestrained inlay work .. probably 18th century?  definitely english, as its owner is.  anyway, this was an onsite job, particularly enjoyable because we have been discussing fixing it off and on for, literally, years. click the photo to enlarge it.

all done today ... check that one out.  ready for the next hundred years.

we've had a run of repairs lately .. here's a shaker like cabinet that had no pulls, a funky fastener on the latch, a big water streak down the front of it and some shelves inside which we removed and replaced with a rod for hanging clothes.  it's got some charm now.

and how often do you see a paper mache tilt top table?  never knew there was such a  thing.
love the scrap abalone oval, what would you call it?,  an applique?

this one had a painting fall on it .. that broke the paper base where the column screwed in. we also added a new catch where before the hinged block was screwed together so it couldn't flip up

technically, this wasn't a repair.  we just made a new base for the top.  the center of the table is a square of reclaimed french parquet floor.  the real thing!  hand hewn from solid wood, with a clever, rustic, mechanism that changes it from a 44 " square to a 62" round

here you can see the mechanism and the 'hand hewn' nature of the original floor

tah dah!  the top is darker, and the base is lighter, in real life ... overhead florescent lights ..

another nostalgic funky family piece .. had a big crack in the side and back, and the two front feet and one of the back feet were loose and had to be removed and reset.

haven't seen it yet with all the drawers.  only one drawer needed work

and this piece ... holy moly !  braziliab rosewood danish modern, damaged in shipping.  another onsite repair

cool piece ..

loved the interior bar detail and and way they cut the doors with the angles on them..
only the left one is open enough to see that.

better now, not perfect, but better

and we recently did six of these .. removing worn out brass casters on the front legs,

and turning new balled feet for the front legs

this is the connector from the trestle table below

as you can see in the photo below, the wedge grounded out on the edge of the hole before the table tightened up.  we squared up the inside edge and made new wedges.  it's solid as a rock now.

we also added a foot to each end to make it a 12' table

and we're working slowly on the doors below ... engineering a frame to hang them .. interesting challenge. they are too short, and too wide for the hole.  i have a plan ...

and we've got a very cool 12 foot walnut table going too .. more on that later

almost forgot this one ... it had a very clever sliding dovetail joint between the back leg and the 1/2" thick top rail.  had to trim off one side and reglue .. should be fine .. it's part of a daily use kitchen set ..

a few repairs ...

 

from a previous post 

 we have been fixing stuff for as long as we have been making stuff.

it is an often interesting part of the gig. 

'you make furniture?'  ... 'can you fix this?'

typically that's how it goes ... and we do 'fix this' ...

here is actually my favorite rescue ...

anyway, we fixed a bunch of stuff last week and i have

one more item to finish for those folks ... 

some were easy, others a little more complex.

we had three pieces of gallery that need repair or replacement ... 

fortunately, we had one almost complete one that we 

could scan and draw over in our cad program ...

we thought about repairing this one, but decided

 once we made the two others, it would be easier to 

just replace it

the two on the top left are new and the one on the far right in the front are new

there was also a pullout below the glass door where

the face flipped down and created a little writing surface.

that needed a repair to the catch and a little wax and love ...

we put one of the drawers back together and replaced

three missing drawer glides on the side of the case ...

a worthy restoration!

and there was a drop leaf table whose leaf had dropped off ...

the screw holes for the handmade hinges were totally

stripped out on all three mortises of  one leaf,

which called for what we refer to as a 'proper repair'.

we did just plug the third hole, but we glued a piece of new wood 

for two of the screws to bite into on all three hinges

on the other leaf we only had to plug one hole ..

once we got the leaf back on, we sanded the finish lightly and 

applied two coats of waterlox oil finish as the client

did not want to refinish the table, which can kill the

antique feeling.  it looked sharp in the end ...

crazy thin wood on the drawer bottoms and sides ..

i had to add some glue blocks, no room even for brads ...

and a bed rebuild ... the screws for the steel rail hardware

 were stripped out, and we were able to replace them with longer

screws .. we reglued the footboard post and made new slats ...

i have one more 'eastlake' piece that needs a backsplash 

i am working on the design concept still

this ain't it!

this piece is one from google images search for

'eastlake furniture' and the piece i am repairing is of the 

eastlake style ... i don't think we would find marble to

match, so i am suggesting wood to match the cabinet ..

there was a splinter in the drawer, and an obvious place 

for it to go ... 

 

more repairs next week ...

have a good weekend!