Finishing a Turn of the Century Table - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration, in Gorham, Maine. Thanks for tuning in as I continue the restoration of this oak table. In parts one and two, I prepared the top for the first coat of varnish. I had the table stripped. I did all necessary repairs. I sanded and stained the top. Let's get back to where I left off. There's still a lot to do. All right, and as I mentioned before, I've got to make some leg extensions for these, but what I'm going to do is they still need a lot of sanding. It's got these cracks which need to be addressed, and I'm going to work on that while I'm thinking about what these extensions might look like. I'm going to put a clamp on these to see if there's any movement shim, so I'll just use putty. I'm going to go over all three leg sections, gluing in wedges. If a crack's big enough, I'll glue a wedge in it, otherwise putty. So I've been putting up all the cracks using the FAMO wood putty. I had another wedge I needed to make, so now I've got a lot of sanding to do on these, and I'll be thinking about my little leg extensions while I'm doing that. So I've got hours of sanding to do on these legs, and so what I'll do during the day-to-day is I need to put another... I need to sand the tabletop. It's got just one coat on it. Do some color work. I've got to get it all ready to put a coat on at the end of the day when I'm done sanding, and I'm also going to work on the drawing and the design of the leg the top in that manner, using a product called Wax Wash Remover. I don't know what it is. It's a proprietary formula, something like paint thinner. If you remember, I thought I was seeing fish eye on that first coat, so wiping it down like that with the Wax Wash Remover could help get the contaminants off the table. The customers approved the color on the top, so we're good there, but I noticed when I was putting the first coat on, some of the aprons, like this one, are really light. I hope you can see it. It's actually the same color as the top, which is what I don't like. I want the apron to be slightly darker than the top, like this section here. I know that this part right here is end grain, so it's naturally darker, but I think you can see the difference between this piece and this piece. And if I darken this, that will then help with that high contrast line right there. So I'm going to use the same type of stain that I used to stain the table with, which is the Lockwood oil-soluble stain, but in this case it's going to be the walnut number 444. So I took some paint thinner, mixed it in here, put in a tablespoon of the walnut stain, so it's a pretty concentrated solution, and I'll put some varnish in here, add some stain to it, and try it out in the apron, see what it looks like. Try a little out here. Oh, definitely needs more stain. Here's that darker section of apron, and it definitely helps. It's definitely a lot closer. It's a little hard to tell, but I think this looks good. I might add a touch more stain to it, then go ahead and do this section. Let's see, I can wipe this off, sections of aprons, I toned four of them. Now I can coat the top with clear varnish. I don't know if you can see this, how well you can see this, but the apron blends really nicely with the top now, and I'm not seeing any signs of that fisheye trying to happen. I got to keep an eye on that. Okay, back to sanding. I want to take care of this wedge I glued in here, and I really need to get back on the leg extensions. So I made a drawing of the existing legs and then designed this leg extension. I looked at photos of commercial bun feet for sale, none of which I could have bought for this project. I had to make these, but it gave me the ideas. I'm going to put out soon a detailed video of the designing and making of these leg extensions. So I need six blocks of wood, about four inches square, about seven or eight inches long. Actually, two of those could be smaller, but for the purposes now, I'll just keep them all the larger size. Okay, I'm about ready to start turning, so I'm going to take a break from the legs and sand and get another coat on the tabletop. So I've got two coats of finish on the top. I've given it plenty of days to dry while I've worked on the other parts of this job, and so now I'm going to give it a third coat. I just need to knock over it lightly with a little 320. I'm just trying to get any nits or anything off of here and just smooth it just a bit. I don't want to take off too much material. I've got a few touch-ups to do. I'll use a brush tip marker. Okay, now for that next coat. Well, the top looks great. I've got the heat turned up to 70. I'm going to let this sit for a couple days. They give me plenty of time to get these new feet turned and the legs sanded and get them caught up to the top. You know, I usually turn spindles and such from the square, but these are so big I think I'm going to cut them again and make them octagonal. So, I'm all done making the feet. Four big ones, two small ones, but before I work on installing these on the legs, I'm going to get what I hope is the final coat on the top. Yeah, so this coat was the third coat and actually it's dried for probably four or five days because I've been working on other things. So, I'm going to sand it. Same routine. I'm going to sand it with 320. I'll go over it with a gray pad. I'll wash it off with that wax wash remover and then put what I hope is the final coat of satin. And for the edges and the apron, I'll just use the Scotch-Brite pad. Wow, the tabletop looks great and it really laid down nice and smooth. Hardly any knits. Almost no knits. I probably need to do very little of this, but I'm going to let it stride overnight. I'm going to let it dry for a few more days. Time to get back to the legs. So, the legs have been stripped and sanded, ready to start the finishing process, but it's got these sleeves from the old casters. I need to remove these and see how my new feet are going to work out. So, that's a three-eighths hole. Pretty standard for these sleeves. I made the dowels on the new feet five-eighths, so I got to drill these out. Oh good, that looks well centered. Oh good, I think this came out well. I was really concerned about having it centered because of this detail here. Pretty good. Yeah, I think that works well. All right, I'm going to do the rest. So, the legs were always darker than the table top, even originally. I put a little paint thinner on them and they look great. I don't think they need to be stained. I'll show you. And then I think I have a stain for the new turnings too. It's just a darker version of the top, which is perfect. For the feet, I tried some of the same stain that I used on the top, and it's not bad at all, but it's on the light side. So, this is the same oil-soluble dye stain I used on the top, and this is the standard golden oak I'm applying, which is too light. That's fine. And then I applied the same type of stain, the oil-soluble dye stain, but this is the walnut. Now, let me put some more paint thinner on that. There's just paint thinner, but I'm assuming that when I put a coat of varnish on it, that's what it's going to look like. So, this looks good, but I might need to mix up a stronger solution. I'll use eight ounces of paint thinner, two tablespoons of the powdered dye stain. So, I've got to let this dissolve for an hour. Okay, let's try it with the stronger dye stain now. So, this is paint thinner on the leg. Presumably, this is what it's going to look like when I put the varnish on it. And here's the walnut stain. I better keep going with this and the whole thing. But I think that looks good, and if it needs to be adjusted in any way, I'll do that with color and finish. Okay, so I'll let these dry overnight, and then tomorrow I can put a coat of clear finish on the legs and the feet. We'll see what they look like. And over the next few hours, as this dries, I'll come back and put even a little more on, especially on the feet like this that are a little bit lighter. Okay, these have dried overnight, and time to put a coat of clear finish on the entire leg and foot. If these feet are too light, I'll be very dry till tomorrow. Oh, let me grab a leaf. So, here you can see the color. It's like the same color, but this is a little darker, and that's the way you want it to be. You never want...legs should never be lighter than the tabletop. Any table, that would look silly. If legs are exactly the same color as the tabletop, then it looks like a new piece of furniture from the furniture store. In antiques, the legs are always darker. Always. Okay, these have dried overnight, finish really soaked in, but before I put on a second coat of clear, some of the feet are still a little bit on the light side, so I'm going to mix some clear varnish. I'm going to mix in some of the same stain that I used, and then brush that coat on the feet, see if I can make them darker. Boy, it's a nice color. I think I can put even more stain in. I love the color. I wonder if it's dark enough. I'll try a little bit. It's definitely darker. I'm not really sure if it's dark enough, but I think I'm going to go with that. I can always do it again. Yeah, I think I'm going to go ahead and use this color. If it's definitely in the right direction, then I'll coat these with clear, and if it's not dark enough, I imagine this is going to need four coats. This is just a second coat, so I can add it again to the third coat, even a fourth coat. You know, when matching colors, people often think you mix up a particular stain, put it on there, and it's the right color, and that's rarely the case. Typically, you build your color in layers, just like this. I stained the wood. Now I've got stain in the finish, one or two coats, then the clear. The finish itself carries with it a really nice amber color, so you're building up the color in layers. Now I need to clear coat the rest of these legs, but I forgot I still have touch-ups to do. let them dry overnight. Yeah, these have dried overnight, and they look great. You can feel little nits here and there. I'm going to go over them with a Scotch-Brite pad just to smooth them out a bit, and then I'll put on a coat of satin, which I'm hoping will be the some paper just to really smooth. So I'm going to go over them with paper, and then I'm going to assemble the table. So these tops are really dried well with very little dust and stuff in it, but the paper has just enough abrasive quality to make it feel silky smooth, and if I find any large nits, I'll hit them with the razor blade. So there was a little light dot there where that So and there it is. This is a late 19th century, you know, circa 1900, late Victorian dining table made out of quarter sawn oak. It's been in use, but the finish on the top had worn off. It was in really bad condition with lots of rings and stuff. One of the aprons was badly cracked. I can't find it on the outside here. If I looked underneath, I could tell which one it was, but that went back together really well. And then a big part of the job was the problem with the height of this table. The original casters raised this table about two inches, and they were small wooden casters, and they just didn't work and damage the floors. They were never good. And then they needed the table to be a little bit higher to accommodate chairs, and so I made new tried to design them to go with the table, and yeah, I think it looks pretty good.