Duncan Phyfe Style Mahogany Dining Table (ca 1950)

I recently completed work on a mahogany veneer dining table. The top needed to be refinished, but I was able to restore the finish on the base. I then gave the table a nice Fench Polished finish. Below are some photos of the repairs and the restoration of this table and it's leaf.

This first photo shows the bases being glued. The legs were pegged in place but they were still a little loose, so I applied some new glue and tightened them up.

 When veneering a surface, most manufacturers also veneer the opposite surface. The reason for this is to keep the wood in the center from taking on moisture  at a different rate from the underside (possibly warping the substrate boards). This technique was applied to this table and over time the veneer on the underside has loosened. Below are photos of three different clamping sessions gluing down the loose veneer.

 Once all of the repairs were made, the table top was sanded to remove scratches and prepare it to be stained. The end result can be seen below.

 Here is the same shot after the stain was added to the top to match the color of the base.

 After many coats of shellac were applied using the French Polishing technique, the table was finally finished. Wax was applied lastly to protect the finish from water spills and give the table  nice even polish. below are three photos of the completed table.

Caned and Upholstered Arm Chair (Ca. 1960)

I recieved a chair recently that had caned panels between the arms and the seat. The original cane was torn on one side and the other had a small hole in it. In addition, the chair was a little loose in spots. Below are a few photos of the chair being repaired followed by some photos of the chair with the new cane installed and the process of staining the cane to match the existing color of the original.

In this first photo, you can see the damage to the cane. Before removing the cane, all of the loose joinery was repaired on the chair.

 Sometimes, a previous repair prevents you from making a repair the way you want to! This was the case here. A dowel holding the arm in place was preventing the joint between the leg and the seat stretcher from closing up entirely. The answer was to glue in a little piece of wood to make up the difference. This is the lighter piece of wood seen in the photo below.

 

After the glue dried I carved the excess away from the scrap piece and touched it up to match the finish and color of the rest of the chair. The repair can be seen (or not seen) in the photo below.

 After the repairs were made I took the chair to the caner and she replaced both panels of cane with new material. Here is a photo of the chair with the new cane.

 The following photo shows the chair prepared for the staining process. I was starting to feel a little like the artist Christo!

 After the stain was applied and sealed with shellac, the plastic was removed to reveal the completed chair. Below are a few photos of the completed work.

Hitchcock Style High Chair 2 (1970)

Deja Vu! Back in June I restored a Hitchcock Style high chair made around 1970 for a customer. Soon after I finished the high chair and wrote a post about it I was contacted by someone looking to buy that chair. Unfortunately the chair was not for sale and I directed this customer to similar examples for sale on the internet. Several weeks later my friend Jesse was in an antique store in Brunswick, Maryland, and saw the exact high chair for sale. After an email to the customer, I drove over to the store and purchased the chair. It was in similar condition to the first one I had worked on and needed the same work. The result was that I restored a second Hitchcock high chair. below are several photos of the restoration as well as the finished product. I have also included a link to the first high chair below:

http://johnmarkpower.blogspot.com/2011/06/hitchcock-style-high-chair-ca1970.html

These first four photos show the high chair after I bought it. The second photo shows a crack in the seat that was repaired. The third photo shows areas where the black paint had chipped off.

 The customer wanted to have the wood parts refinished like the other one that I had worked on. Here is a photo of the seat after the finish was removed followed by another photo of the tray and foot rest with the finish removed.

 These next two photos show the wood parts after they were sanded and stained.

 The next two photos show the chair during the finishing process.

 Here are some photos of the completed chair. All of the black paint was touched up. After these photos were taken the chair was packed and shipped to the customer.

Pressed Back Rocking Chair (ca 1890)

One of the pieces I have recently completed is a pressed back rocking chair made around 1890. The reason I give for this date is that that is when the method of pressing designs (into wood using metal wheels with the design etched in) was first used in a commercial setting. The wheel was forced down on to the wood surface (probably powered by steam) and rolled across the surface of the wood creating the patterns and giving the overall impression of a carved back. The overall design of this chair also seems to be fitting with the turn of the last century.

The chair was very loose and had a severe break in the seat of the chair. One of the lower back posts had pierced through the seat and was lodged with the tenon poking through. This break happened quite sometime ago, because at one point someone tried to address it with nails and then covered over the seat with naugahyde. The seat subsequently cracked in half and was only held together by braces underneath. In addition, the chair was held together with nails in all of the joinery. In short, this rocking chair needed some help!

Below are photos of the chair from start to finish. You can see all of the repairs made and the final product. I will start with a photo of the chair as it arrived in my shop.

 Here is a close up of the seat with the upholstery.

Once the naugahyde was removed, I could see the extent of the damage. In this photo you can see how the wood was raised by the tenon poking through.

The photo below shows the crack that developed in the entire seat.

Once the seat was removed from the rest of the chair I removed the braces that were bracing the seat. I believe that the smaller brace was original to the chair while the bluish green slat was added as a repair.

Another view of the damaged seat.

After the braces were removed, I removed the finish from the seat. The crack in the seat was completely separated as seen in the photo below.

This was a section of the seat that was completely loose. It had been repaired before and had lost some material. Rather than putting it back in, I made a patch that would span the area. This way there was a tighter surface for gluing up.

This photo shows the new patch before it was glued in place. It was later carved flush with the contour of the seat.

Here is a photo of the seat being glued up.The patch is also being glued and can be seen in the lower right corner of the photo.

After the seat was glued, I noticed significant wood loos in the underside of the crack that ran the length of the seat. Glue alone would not hold the seat together! I made three butterfly patches that spanned the crack in three spots. Below is a photo of the patches before they were inserted into the seat. The following photo shows the patches in place and trimmed flush.

While the glue on the patches was drying, I disassembled the rest of the chair and scraped the joints clean. The chair had many nails in it which took a little time to remove, but I eventually got all of the loose joints apart. The following two photos show the chair knocked apart.

I glued the rocker up with the arms held in place by clamps alone so I knew that everything aligned properly. After the glue dried I removed the arms and spindles to make the staining of the seat a little easier. Here is a photo of the chair glued up followed by a photo of the chair with the arms removed and the seat stained.

 After the seat was stained, the last thing to do was to build up the finish on the seat and clean and add finish to the rest of the chair. The results can be seen in the three photos of the completed rocking chair.