Rebuilding old things is a lot of fun

In between tool rehabilitation projects and blade honing sessions, I have found some time to actually do some woodworking in the workshop. In the last two weeks, I've rebuilt a shattered 19th century violin and some broken chairs. Both were projects that were stuck in the pipeline for the best part of 5 years.

The violin is one the numerous 19th century German or Bohemian copies of Italian classics. This one was labelled as "Nicolaus Amatus" which was disproved with a cursory look at the neck. As it was unshortened, there's no way it could be older than 19th century. Funnily enough, the 20th century fake labels often have an indication of the country of real manufacture. As this one lacked that indication, and had a luthier note from repairs in 1904, it's most certainly a 19th century piece.

Let's start rebuilding it! First the two parts around the f hole needed to be glue back together.

 I made new patches from riven air-dried fir, dead straight grain.

 During previous repairs, 3 of the corner blocks went missing... so I made new one from riven air-dried fir. It's really nice to work with as you can simply split it to shape instead of sawing.

 A round moulding plane clamped upside down in the front vise quickly adjusts the corner blocks to fit.

 Shaving down the patches with a chisel

 The next day

 A bit further along, the top plate is back in one piece.

 The corner blocks are back in place

 I know, wrong clamp type for a violin but I didn't need to add a lot of pressure

 Pegs and end pin inserted, however the end pin hole was too large and off-axis

End pin hole plugged, drilled and reamed.

 Only missing the bridge and the strings

 It won't win any beauty contest, but at least it's back to one piece now.

So I've had this set of 4 old German chairs for a while... they're dusty, mouldy, the caning is damaged or ripped in places and some are broken. I had been planning to spend a couple of evenings fixing them but never seemed to find the time. A reddit discussion on cleaning up smelly wooden furniture made me pull one of them to take pics of the simple process I use.

Take a dirty smelly piece of furniture, this chair for example.

 Make a small pad from 000 or 0000 steel wool, then dip it in a BLO/Turps mix. Quickly wipe the piece of furniture with the pad and let it rest somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes. Come back with a lint-free cloth and wipe off the excess oil. If you used enough oil, all the contaminants on top of the wood will float to the top of the oil.

 Doing one half at a time really shows the progress

 The mortise and tenon joint in the front left leg broke at the shoulder, so I tried a fix I saw on youtube recently... wet the broken parts with hot water, then apply hot hide glue and clamp

 Clamped and left alone for the night.

The next morning, after removing the clamps, the chair could support my weight without any issue. We'll see if that fix will last or if I'll need to drill out the tenon and insert a new one.

As the first chair was a success, I decided to attempt a more complicated one:
All tenons were loose, one leg was broken, and a nail went through the mortise wall.

 The easy stuff first, let's glue and clamp the mortise wall. While this was setting, I soaked the broken off piece in the water of the hot hide glue pot for a couple of minutes and started gluing back the joints.

Quickly add the last bits of glue and clamp it all together. We'll see tomorrow if that worked out ok. Otherwise I'll need to drill out a pocket to insert a reinforcement dowel in the broken leg... Charles Hayward has a nice jig for that in his "Antique Furniture Repairs" book.

Talking of Charles Hayward... the post office delivered this today while I was at work:

I'll order the missing Hayward books at the end of the month then start collecting Wearing's books.

More molding planes!

So I "accidentally" stopped at the same flea market yesterday morning and it turns out that the seller had another laundry basket of tools for an even lower price!

The basket contained a lot of molding planes, and as luck would have it... the missing iron from a match plane in the previous basket.

The following pieces directly caught my eye, so I quickly scrubbed them clean and re-oiled them... cleaning and waxing the posts and threads. It's a sash molding plane, something I have been trying to find locally for the best part of 10 years.

I really love the whole-profile boxing on the complex part of the molding. However, it is becoming loose and will have to be removed and reset properly. I think I should be able to steam it out, let it dry and glue it back in with hide glue. The posts are also made of boxwood, and the glue has failed through drying.

 There's also one missing screw, I will need to take the mechanism apart to see exactly what screw to get.

 Slightly better view of the boxing coming loose.

 The maker's stamp "GW Denison & Co, Winthrop, Conn". From a quick search:

Name: Denison & Co., Gilbert Wright
Active: Winthrop, Connecticut 1868-1890
Tool Types: Augers, Bits, Carpenter Tools, and Wood Planes
Identifying Marks: G.W.DENISON&Co./WINTHROP/CONN. (all lines curve upward); G.W.DENISON&Co/WINTHROP.CONN.; G.W.DENISON/WINTHROP.CONN

 Most of the reseller's stamp has been removed by careless hammering in the past of the plane. I can just read the following "Casse???? Reed & Co"

Both irons are skewed and in a fairly decent state for their age. The flat one had some pitting on the bevel, so I freehand ground it back past the pitting and re-established a fresh bevel. I still need to work a bit on lapping the back of the complex iron, but it already works

Post-regrinding of the complex iron, as it wasn't matching the boxing anymore.

Restoring moulding planes

Two weeks ago, I bought a basket of hand planes for pocket change. I have started restoring them this morning, cleaning up the irons, waxing the soles and testing them.

A couple of planes were missing their wedges, so I thought I'd document how I make replacement wedges for those planes. I was relatively lucky, as I actually had a very similar wedge to copy.

I start with some riven beech I had stashed away, I then trace the shape from the similar wedge. I saw off the new wedge, clean up with a plane and start working on the finial.

As it is riven beech, I can simply pare the design off then come back to clean it with a rasp and then a file.

Almost ready, now it's time to pare off the ramp and start test-fitting the wedge.

The wedge is in and just needs to drop a few more mm. That's where I get a finely set smoothing plane and adjust the front of the wedge until it fits where I want.

For Brian :)

2 thousands of an inch in beech

1 thousandth of an inch in fir, yesterday when I was testing the plane.

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.

More antique books, cleaning up the rust pile and carving.

Last Friday, I received another antique French woodworking book: "L'ÉBÉNISTERIE" by Henry Havard. While it is not on the same scale as Roubo, it was an interesting read. I may try to procure some of the other volumes from that collection. I am now also looking on antique architecture, drawing and carving books.

The rust pile is rapidly shrinking as I have been pickling antique files in molasses water for a few weeks now. I must say that I am very impressed with the results and I may try it out on a saw plate. As usual, I forgot to take picture of the process... I have rescued a box of antique files and rasps with this method and they do look brand new. While I was in the rust pile, I checked if I had any carving gouges but unfortunately came out empty handed.

While waiting for season 34 of The Woodwright's Shop, I have been watching (again) the last 7 seasons during my commute... which included quite a few bits on molding and carving, so now I've got a new itch to scratch. I have been doodling acanthus leaves, roses, camelia and vines for a week solid now. It is quite surprising as carving was the medium I enjoyed the least in my art classes... I loved clay, photography and technical drawing but loathed drawing and carving. Tonight, I watched pretty much all of Mary May's videos on youtube and added a pile of related content to my "watch later" list.