Its all in the details....

There is something special about old stair cases in a home. I love the overall statue, the details, and the overall construction. Its easy to see why these stair cases have lasted so long! Today sadly the majority of the stair cases are being made or restored to a lower quality. 

Can you blame the contractors? My answer is yes and no. Some contractors simply don't know how the makers of the past made stairs, or simply there isn't enough money in the budget. But if there is a budget to restore a stair case than I think they must make them how they once were versus simply toe nailing balusters in place and making round tenons. 

Below you will find a stair case with dovetailed balusters. Its simply a thing of beauty. I was luck to bid on this job but sadly I didn't get the job because the contractor didn't budget the cost and necessary work involved. 

But I am happy to say that I was able to educate the contractor and now he will have me bid on staircases before hand. Today my interest in the woodworking world is more in houses and architectural details. While I love furniture there is more money in house work and for me to continue  living the dream I must do what I can to save the pass and make money as small business. 

If you have a staircase that needs a little TLC, than contact me. I will happily travel to the site if the money is right. 

Cheers!

Many trades come together to restore an entry of a Brownstone

Just recently I had the great opportunity to help Ryaan Tuttle from RJT Carpentry and Tile to restore this pair of amazing entry doors.  It was amazing to see all the trades coming together and restoring this entryway with so much age and history. The crafts are alive and we the few are working hard to save, conserve, and restore the old, vintage, and quality from the masters before us. 

Turned beaded moulding.

 I needed to make a beaded moulding for a clock I am restoring.  But before I spend the 10 mins of joy making the beaded moulding there is a list of things that must get done first.

The beaded moulding that is attached to the back of the clock door needs to match this exactly. I was able to trace the profile and match the diameter with one of my chainsaw files.

But before I can turn the bead I need to create a mounting plate and two wooden rings that are oversized in diameter.

The first step is to layout center and scribe the desired circle on a piece of plywood and mahogany. Pay attention to the grain direction in the mahogany to ensure it matches.  Once the circles are scribed I cut them out on the bandsaw. Again everything is over sized.

 After the plywood and mahogany are cut I than make a paper joint glued with hide glue. The reason for adding American kraft paper is for ease of removing the moulding from the plywood. The glue up sequence went baltic birch plywood, kraft paper, mahogany. I also used Old Brown Hide Glue for its  open time. With the glue spread I clamped everything together and added wax paper just in case any glue squeeze occurs.

Clamping even inch I could to ensure everything is clamped properly. The last thing you need is the wood to fly off. 

Getting ready for gluing. Often I span my glue ups between the jaws of my vise. This allows proper support as I clamp.

Next came the grinding of the cutter necessary to make the bead. The tool of choice is the tip of an old file. This is a common technique in the restoration world and one that should be remembered. 

Here I am filing the tip of the file to match the moulding. The file I used was a 1/8 diameter chainsaw file. Hand files are made from mild steel so modifying them is quite easy. 

The tip of the file shaped. 

This is the view of the first beveling on he bottom of the cutter. 

After the primary grind has been establish I than use a a chainsaw file, or a small grinding wheel, or dremel to grind as much metal away. I often compare this to a complex moulding plane iron. By removing as much metal as possible I can than hone the cutter with slipstones to ensure a quality cut. 

Once everything has dried and the cutter has been made its time to turn. But first I need to bore a center hole in the plywood so I can screw it to the treaded center of the Carey lathe. Side note: The  W. W. Carey lathe was made in the end of the 19th century in Lowell, MA and an amazing lathe to say the least. 

The screw center. 

Center bored

Before I can start turning the bead I must first remove the necessary material to ensure the lathe and the turning are true and balanced. This is the reasoning for leaving everything over sized. Once everything is close to true, I can than turn the thickness and width down to size. I used a parting tool to do all the lathe work necessary before introducing the customer cutter.

I tested the cutter before reaching final thickness. I wanted to make sure I understood how the tool would cut. 

Where I engaged the the tool to the wood. 

Here you can see I am reaching final width and depth. 

The turning wasn't 100% balanced and true but it was close enough. 

The end result was a success.

There was a lot work involved just to get ready to turn. But boy those 10 mins of turning was fun.

I hope you found this interesting and remember in case you need to make a custom cutter someday.

Screws that won't budge. What to do.....

As a restorer  I often am taking something apart and reassembling it. Often the screws that I am removing are slotted. I know, I know. Most of you hate slotted. But I on the other hand love them. So what do you do when a screw doesn't want to budge? Well a long time ago I learned by heating the head of the screw with a soldering iron you can make the wood pull away from the heat. Also if you heat the screw hot enough, once the metal cools it shrinks just enough for the screw to  be loosen. The soldering iron tip I find the most useful is the one that tapers on all four faces and fits into the screw slot.  

Once the screw has been heated a very important too you will need is a proper screw driver that fits properly in the screw slot. Another great tip is to bevel the corners of the screw driver tip so it doesn't ruin the slot.  We restorers like to keep things nice and tidy. Lastly once you've heated the screw and everything is cooled down, make sure to first twist right to break any bond and than rotate left to remove the screw. 

The next blog post will be about keeping track of your hardware. So stay tuned for that. 

When all other clamps fail...

I am in the middle of restoring an amazing English drop leaf candle stand made from great old English Oak.  I have become quite fond of English Oak or Oak in general and look forward to working with it more in my work. 

The table came into the shoppe because a leg needed to reattached, another leg was loose, and a few fragments of the post started to crack and fail.  While gluing the parts back to their locations, I quickly noticed that from the broad selection/style of clamps I own nothing was going to work. 

This is where the infamous upholstery springs came to the rescue again. The clamps get cut with wire cutters and the tips get ground or filed to blunt tip. I love these clamps because they give me the desired pressure where it is needed.  These clamps are easy to make and I highly recommend having many on hand. I often use them for so many clamping situations.  

Broken round tenon

I am in the beginning stages of repairing 110 chairs for the MIT chapel in Boston Massachusetts. When I am repairing any piece of furniture new, vintage, or antique I always weigh my options. The question I always ask myself is can I save the damaged area or do I need fabricate a new part. There are many things to consider when making this decision and they should not be taken lightly. In the video above you will see me saving a chair rail from one of the MIT chairs by fabricating a new tenon.

The process... To save the chair rail I vertically bored a 1/2 inch hole about 1 inch deep in the chair rail. The rail was 5/8 thick overall. By boring a hole perfectly centered I knew I had 3/32 -1/8 inch of wood all around to help hold the new tenon in place.  Why bore 1 inch in the rail? Over the years I have tested different length and width tenons in holes and have determine that 1 inch is ideal. Anything less can break and anything more doesn't drastically improve the strength.

Once the hole is bored I take a dowel and size it to fit in the 1/2 inch hole. I make the tenon by rotating over a saw blade while using a miter gauge.  This is really quick work and really easy.

The adhesive I love using for such repairs is West System G/Flex epoxy. This epoxy is thick, slow setting, and wicked strong.  I have tested this epoxy by gluing two pieces MDF for 24 hours and than trying to break the joint. What resulted from the bashing of the hammer was everything else broke but not the joint.  

After the epoxy is dry I am ready to glue the chair. The new joint/tenon is stronger than ever. Please note epoxy is only used when all other options will possibly fail. There is no need to use epoxy to glue up the chair. Always think about the next person who will need to fix the chair in the future. 

Thank you for reading and watching the short video. 

Cheers!

 

Labeling parts

 I'm in the middle of restoring 110 chairs for a chapel in Boston.  I need to disassemble each of the chairs while keeping track of all the parts.  So what is my method to the madness of parts laying around the shoppe?  Well its pretty simple actually, I use blue tape and a sharpie and label every part. It is very important that each of the markings can easily be seen and each chair has its unique labeling system. By unique labeling system I mean not every chair will start with the letter A or number 1. Some chairs depending on quantity of parts may start with the letter Z and work back to the letter A or start at number 99 and work back to number 1. Some chairs may even have a combination of numbers and letters. When things start to get crazy than I switch color tape from blue to green to purple.  

 In the end it doesn't matter what you label the parts just as long as they go back exactly where they came from.  One important thing to remember is don't use masking tape or duct tape. The adhesives on these two tapes are often to strong and will remove the finish or just leave terrible tape residue which now needs to be removed.

As you can see there is no way I can screw this up and that is the point of labeling.  I hope this helps.

Book Recommendation on Furniture Care and Conservation

 Often I get asked if there is a book on furniture care, repair, and conservation.  Really the best response is to join GROOP other wised known as the Professional Refinishers Group. This group of individuals are all over the USA and overseas. The members are all professionals and range in age from their 30's to 60's.  Some are professional conservators, restorers, makers, upholsters, violinist, and woodworkers.  We as a groop are what we call family and all we want is to share information and ask questions amongst our groop and get answers.  This is a support groop and secrets don't exist.

But if I had to recommend one book it would Furniture Care and Conservation by Robert F. McGiffin, Jr. Its a great book with a ton information. The methods in this book still are standards in the repair world.  The photo below showcases the chapters in the book.  

Giving new life to a piece of furniture.

When it comes to my world of restoration and woodworking I not too picky if the money is right. Take for example the set of 4 shield back chairs made from mahogany and now painted. While some will say why would you paint them? There are also many who will say I love them! Really when it comes down to it, my business is to save furniture from heading into a dumpster or another land fill. If I can give a client the look they desire by painting and/or adding new upholstery than I have succeeded. But not only have I succeeded in satisfying the client, I also prevent them from purchasing a low grade, off gassing, production made item made who knows where. Now that puts a smile on my face.

The process I went through to paint the chairs was relatively simple. I abraded all surfaces with the red scotch brite pad from Norton, wipe all the dust down, and brushed on a couple coats. Than I sprayed on 3 more coats of paint.  Why brush and than paint? The client wanted a brush look so by brushing first the spray coats will lay over the brush strokes and appear each layer was brushed on.  Spray painting is far easier and faster than brushing. Also spraying gives you more control and allows you to get paint in hard to reach areas. The spray gun of choice... drum roll please.... The cheap harbor freight gravity feed gun. Why? I dedicate my guns and I don't want to spend the time to clean each gun perfectly.  So I have a paint gun for white, black, grey, finishes, shellac, lacquer, etc.  This says a ton of time and solvents.  Once all the painting is done I hit all surfaces with  a brown paper bag and burnish the surface.

That is it. Quick and easy. If I can do you surely can as well.

Hide glue for sale.

Hide glue the oldest of all the glues commonly used in woodworking. With any glue there are pros and cons. The cons are the glue must be hot, some form of a double boiler must be used, it can spoil, open time can be a concern, and cheap glue smells badly. The pros are reversibility, easy to repair, easy of sanding, perfect for hammer veneering, non-toxic, no creep, will stick to old hide glue, and best of all the glue is transparent to most finishes. 

Hide glue is the ideal traditional protein glue for veneering, and with a bit of practice you can successfully veneer without a pile of clamps or the need of a vacuum press. It's the perfect glue for the occasional user. You can do many joints just by rubbing the wood together until they get tacky and stick - no need for clamps. 

Commonly hide glue is sold in many different "gram strengths." The higher the gram strength of glue the tackier and stronger the glue. The stronger the glue is often the less "open time" you have. For this simple reason I only stock 192-gram strength hide glue. The hide glue I stock is made by the last supplier of hide glue in the states and it's the highest refined hide glue available with the least amount of odor.

Mixing: 

Use equal parts of water and glue.  Once the glue is in liquid form the rule for adding water is hot glue means hot water/cold glue means cold water must be used.  Ideal temperature is 120-150 degrees. Anything higher and the glue will start to cook and weaken.  If any mold is formed the glue shouldn’t be used.  If the use the glue isn’t regular than it can be placed in the refrigerator for safekeeping.

Shelf life:

In granule form the glue will be good standing for 100 plus years.

If interested in purchasing some glue please visit my etsy store found here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/489778424/hide-glue-192-gram-strength?ref=shop_home_active_1

The Wedge

I often get asked how do I take apart chairs? Well usually chairs come to me because they are often loose, which means there are gaps between the joints. This allows me to use artist pallet knives and wedges to separate the joints.  The wedges depending on the wood and value can be made from pine, poplar, or even maple. I have a ton on hand for I break them often. There are also moments when hot vinegar is used to help soften the glue. Its amazing what a little vinegar warmed in the microwave can do for you.  

Moving damage on a carved frame

Recently I have decided to record some of my work. This goes back to the day I read Chris Schwarz blog post on why to blog. Sometimes its not about who reads your blog but rather have your work recorded for the future. 

I was recently contacted by a restorer who had a mirror that was damaged in a move. I am not sure why the broken elements weren't saved! So I made a mold from another section of the mirror that matched closely to the missing section. Once the mold harden in about 6 hours I was able to remove it from the mirror.  I than poured the casting material in the mold and within 1 hour I had a mold made. 

Next came the shaping, filing, sanding, and carving of the mold.  Attaching the mold to the small tips was also fun. I am not sure why, but I love this complex work. I barrier coated all wooden areas that was going to be glued with hide glue, and once dry I epoxied the mold in place.  

After the epoxy was dry I applied some red and yellow ochre pigments, and than some gold pigment powders. Lastly I applied a little shellac. I am happy with the results and so is the client.   

The Ebony Cane

A client had a walking cane made from Gaboon Ebony, unfortunately the husks broke off. The clients wanted to inquire if by chance could I take a bone bracelet cut it down, shape it to fit, and glue the pieces in as husks.  As I was always told early on in my career, you never say no to a paying job.  

Well I did it...  I cut the bracelet and made two husk out of them and glued them in place. Below is a series of photos of the effort and an over view of a beautiful cane.