In progress...

At the moment I'm working on following chairs (details coming soon):


This one has a horrible finish but some nice carvings.

Let's see if we can save the chair seat...

This is a nice chair but was upholstered at least three times, the latest with some plastic coating.

The Thonet chair is nearly done. Details will come up soon...

These are some wonderful school chairs who unfortunately were repaired with nails, and they don't go out easily.

And the last acquisition.

Hope you're interested to see what becomes of all the chairs! So keep in touch.

Preparing fish glue

You can buy fish glue in pearls. You soak them in doble amount of water over night. The next day you can heat the mixture up in a water bath until the pearls are dissolved totally. It smells bad but the pearls have nearly no expiry date and the glue can be reheated whenever you want to use it again. But you have to apply it rapidly as it toughens and gets hard quickly. One of the advantages of fish glue is that you can undo the glued connection by applying warm water or heating the glue up, e.g. with an iron. Fish glue is used on old furniture and also on marquetry. On the Old-Woodworking-Tools webpage you'll find a really nice copy of an old newspaper showing some gluepots.

Links

Please, feel free to add a comment if you found a good webpage explaining woodworking techniques, about history of ancient furniture, restoration in general or whatever you find interesting to be shown on this site.

Spinning Wheel

A few weeks ago, I found a
spinning wheel to restore. The finding was full of wood worm holes, one of the three legs was broken, also the bracket for the missing distaff.

First, the spinning wheel was separated into its individual pieces. Two pin unions had to be sawn apart. All parts were cleaned with acetone (see picture), treated with permethrin to stop the wood worm infestation, and consolidated with paraloid, in order to prevent further fractures.

As a next step, the broken bracket had to be reconstructed.

Therefore a part of wood, cut into a similar form, was glued to the site of fracture and was shaped with wood carver tools. In order to simulate the color, we applied some ink on the inflicted piece.

Furthermore, the pin connections were repaired. First new pins had to be planed, then they were glued into the previously drilled holes.
The many small wood worm holes were filled with a paste of colored mastix powder, using a small spatula, and, after a drying phase, it was sandpapered to smooth the surface.

On all parts, several layers of shellac were applied, after drying, possible cotton threads were eliminated with some fine steel wool - also to smoothen the surface and to remove uneven spots. Afterwards, two or three layers of shellac were applied and again slightly matted with steel wool.

Now, the parts were put back together and possibly some repairs were made - e.g. refitting pins (see picture).
Then the spinning wheel could be glued together again.
Finally some wax was applied and the piece was polished.
Ready... hope to sell it soon! My next projects need some space.

Mesa Camilla

My first piece to restore was a Mesa Camilla. It's a table that was used in Spain as heater: A pan with hot coals ("brasero") was placed under the table, and a table cloth, which reached to the floor and could be drawn over your legs while sitting on the table, was thrown over the surface.

The piece, which I restored, consists of a round table surface, a collapsible frame and a part which holds the pan. The parts were cleaned with acetone, and permethrin was injected to stop the wood worm infestation. Afterwards shellac was spreaded and all was matted with fine steel wool.

The metal hinges, allowing to fold the frame, were cleaned with a glass fibre pen and painted.




The fissures and wood worm holes were closed with wax, remains were removed with steel wool.
After a final application of shellack, the table was polished. Ready...