Books of the Gutenberg projects library

You probably now the Gutenberg-Project, who provides copyright-free or copyright-freed books on the Internet for free downloading.

There you can find the Illustrated History of Furniture from Frederick Litchfield (1893) (already a little bit older). I recommend to download the HTML-format because of the embedded links to the relevant illustrations.

An other recommendation concerns a book from 1909f: Mission Furniture - How to make it from Henry H. Windsor, part 1, part 2 and part 3. He describes how to make different furniture. You can find a lawn swing, a billiard table and even a nice porch chair. One of my favorites (because it's sooo retro) is the settee on page 70f.

Thonet-style chair

The bentwood chair is in good conditions, apart from the seat's broken wickerwork. For restoration we have to take the chair apart.

At one leg we have to repair a contusion in applying wet cotton fibers. This should help to swell the wood to its original form.

As next step with a screwdriver we have to remove the broken wickerwork from the seat.

Now we remove the stain of all component parts. On the picture you can see the upper leg in its original state and the lower legs already stripped.


To give it a darker appearance we apply colored shellac. Afterwards, when you like the color, apply (with some cotton fibers) a lot of thin layers of colorless finish.

Soak the machine-made wickerwork for some minutes in water. Then put it on the seat frame and batter it into the groove of the frame. It helps if you cut a piece of wood to the exact size of the groove. As you can see on the picture, this is used like a wedge to tuck the matching round wood (which pins the wickerwork into the frame) and the wickerwork into the groove.

Cut the protruding wickerwork. If you desire a darker seat, apply some color pigments (dissoluble in alcohol) with a brush. In our case we used some colored shellac.


Now you can rejoin the parts - some will be glued, others screwed. At the end apply some wax and polish the chair.

Here you can find a link to the offical Thonet website: Thonet

Basic joints

Here are the basic joints for restoration (Crisi, thanks for the fotos!):

This is a basic Mortise and Tenon Joint.
It consists of a protruding part, the tenon, and a well fitting negative form, the mortise. On the picture you see a joint cut with chisel. This technique is used e.g. on shoulder parts of chairs, but also for reparation of broken parts.



This is a Corner Bridle Joint with a 45° cut.





The Half Lap Splice has less glueing surface. This makes it a weaker joint, so we use it for smaller loads.






The Mitred Half Lap has an even smaller glueing surface.







This kind of Dovetail Joint is used for reparation of broken parts, in particular for torn seats or tables.






The Dovetail Joint prevents withdrawal.


On the following website you will find all joints with description, possible applications and methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodworking_joints