Thursday 13 August 2015

Rebuilding antique chairs

Last week, my lovely wife won a set of 4 antique chairs on eBay for pocket change. So we picked them up on Saturday afternoon. They were in serious need of some TLC, the wood was very dry and grey. Unfortunately, I forgot to take "before" pictures.

I first started by cleaning them all. First with a brush to remove the cobwebs and the surface dust, then I gave them a good scrub with 000 steel wool dipped in linseed oil. That quickly brought them back to a really nice color. A good hour later, I wiped them down with paper towels. That removed all the dust.

Once they were clean, I moved to the structural damage. One chair was in 5 pieces, one chair needed to have the seat reattached and a third one I am still trying to figure how to repair.





I cleaned up all the areas that would receive glue on those chairs while a fresh liquid hide glue batch was cooking in my very traditional glue pot.



As it wasn't that hot, I hurried up reassembling both chairs. I quickly brushed hide glue in the mortises and on the tenons. I fitted all pieces together and firmly clamped them.


A bit later, I removed the clamps and reattached the seat on the fully rebuilt chair. I still need to clean up traces of previous "repairs" that used large wire nails to attach the seat.


All in all, not too bad for 8€ and about 1 hour of sweat equity.



Here they are, with a table from the same vintage and origin. The pairing is totally accidental, as that table was an impulse buy on a flea market that very same morning. The next morning, I added a coat of wax to the chairs and buffed it off.

There was another piece of furniture included, but it will be the subject of a separate post.

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