Victorian Beech side Chair (ca 1875) Part 1

I am currently working on a large set of  Eastlake/Cottage furniture from the late 19th century which I will write about in an upcoming post. Along with this set came a Victorian side chair made from beech. The finish was very thick and old (almost resembling paint) and the chair had several breaks that needed to be repaired. I decided to write a post dealing with the repairs up to the staining of the chair. I will post photos of the chair when it is completed and a new cane seat has been applied.

This first photo shows the chair as it came to me.

 Once the cane seat was removed, I took a few close up photos of some of  the previous repairs made to the chair using nails. The next two photos show these repairs in detail.

 This photo shows the seat frame with the cane removed.

 The first step was to remove the old finish. The photo below shows the chair once this was completed.

 The chair was then dismantled so that I could clean the loose joinery of it's old glue. This also gave me a chance to make repairs to the seat frame. The broken section of the seat frame can be seen in the bottom of the photo.

 This photo shows the frame front section of the seat frame being repaired.

One of the stretchers that goes from front to back was missing and the one opposite it had a very large crack that had been repaired with nails. Rather than fixing this stretcher, I decided to turn two new stretchers out of beech from an old table runner.

 the next two photos show the chair being glued up.

 This close up shot shows the new stretchers in place.

 After the glue had dried, I sanded the wood to prepare it for staining.

I stained the chair based on the darkest color on the chair. It will be a similar color to the rest of the cottage furniture when it is completed.

As I mentioned before, I will write a follow up entry when the chair is completed.