Restoring a Clock Case Finish - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. This is a nice clock. It's a carriage clock because of the handle on top. It's not an antique. It has a conventional factory finish. On this side, some water must have dripped or something and has lifted the finish and in this case the finish has completely come up. I need to restore just those areas. So you can see that all the water damage is on this one side, in fact not even the side itself. You can see cracks across the top here, this obviously, this surface, the edge, the side was left alone which is nice, and then down here at the bottom. So what I want to do is tape off all the areas that have been unaffected. I'd like to take this handle off but it's held on by some bolts way up in there. I'd have to take the clockworks out in order to get to it. Interestingly enough, one of the nuts is missing but it's still held on by one of them. I'm just going to tape around it. This top does have damage at this end but I think that I will touch that up and recoat it rather than scrape this down. These other areas I've got to take down to the bare wood. I can see where the lower, this lowest edge of the side panel is damaged but I think I can touch that up too and re-spray the panel without redoing the whole thing. Now I've got to do these moldings and I have a variety of scrapers that might help me with that. I've got a set here of different shape scraper blades and I also have a scratch beading tool. I'm not going to use the tool itself but it comes with a set of blades of a lot of different curves and sizes and I think there's some in here also that I could use on some of these. Now I still think this little area on the side along the bottom here, I don't think it's worth scraping down this whole side for that. I'm going to sand that during, near the end of the finishing process, I'm going to sand that area, touch it up and then re-spray that side. Alright, scraping is done. Now I'll start in, I'll sand everything and I'm going to start with 150 and see if that gets me where I need to be. I find that these contour sanding blocks really come in handy for jobs like these. Alright, after sanding with 150, I sanded it all again really well with 220. The reason is, when I put stain on here, I really want to make sure it's not too dark. I'm going to do the finishing with lacquer aerosols and I can adjust the color somewhat then. You know, I don't even know what kind of wood this is, we don't know what kind of stain they used originally, we've got to proceed carefully. The worst thing that can happen is you put stain on here and it's too dark. I grabbed a piece of quarter inch pine, sanded it up, it's real nondescript white wood, I also don't know what that is, and I grabbed some raw umber stain, I'm going to try that out because it doesn't have any red in it. As I've mentioned many times before doing touch up work or work like this, you do not want to use a stain that's too red. And this is some medium dark walnut stain, which might be useful, I'd have to thin it out a lot. I hope you can see that this stain is really greenish, really has no red in it. And now I'm going to mix up some of this stain, I'm going to thin it out and try it, see what it looks like. You can see how obviously it's a lot lighter, maybe I need a little bit more walnut and a little bit of the raw umber. Yeah I like what I'm seeing here, especially up here where I left a little bit more on, it looks really good. So bear in mind, I like what I'm seeing here, but this is just a random piece of wood, it really doesn't matter. What matters is how it looks on the clock. So I'll try a little bit, I'm close enough now that I will try a little bit on the back of it here. It still looks a little too red, redder than this. It's hard to tell because it's lighter. I'll add a little bit more raw umber to the mix here, that should darken it and lessen the red, I hope. Well I like what I'm seeing here, I'm going to go ahead and stain like this entire back edge and look again. The important thing is that, well it looks good, it looks like the right color, and it looks a little lighter. You know I like what I'm seeing here, it's a really good color, it's a little lighter and I'll go with that. I don't want the end grain to get too dark and like I said before, you do not want to stain something too dark. I'll stain it a little on the light side. You can see how good the color looks right here, but of course at the same time you can see that that stain kind of wicked up where that finish is damaged on this side. But I'm going to sand that anyway, sand the finish, and hopefully I'll get that mark out. I've wiped it with some paint thinner here, but it doesn't seem to really help it. That finish was compromised and I think the stain went right under it. Alright, so I'll let the stain dry for a while and then I'll seal these areas. Now I'm going to tape off this side, I don't want to spray it yet. Now I'll give it a coat of aerosol shellac. So last night, off camera, I gave it another coat of shellac. First coat soaked in pretty well, second coat, it's sealed well now. So I can look at my color here and kind of spin this around, you can see that this cove molding is darker, the rest of it looks good. The top definitely looks light. I think what I need to do is I'm going to sand this with some 500 and then go over the moldings with a gray pad and then tone this with some raw umber. So now I'm going to tone it, this is an aerosol lacquer with dye stain in it. I think before I said I was going to use raw umber, but I'm going to use perfect brown. Alright, this has dried overnight, now it's not necessary to let these dry overnight. These lacquers can dry in an hour or two. This happens to have dried overnight. It looks really good, it's the right color, it's still too light, so I'm just going to hit it again. I can go right over it without sanding or anything, you don't want to sand if the finish has color in it. This looks good, I really like the color I'm seeing in the top here. It's a little bit lighter, but I think the top was light before, in fact I think it was even lighter than this. Very good. Alright, I'm going to now spray all these parts that I've toned with a coat of gloss lacquer. Alright, now this has dried overnight, so now I want to remove a bunch of this paper. I need to have a look at this and see how my color's working. Yeah, this is so interesting. My color looks good. It's funny, this front molding and this whole front is so light, and then this molding here. If you remember I said I thought the top was much lighter than the rest of it, and I think it was. This and this and the top were all kind of bleached out. So I may actually sand this, in fact I will, I'm going to sand this and add a little color to this to make it more light. Besides. And then I'll need to tackle this little touch up at the bottom of this side here. Okay, so now I can see this needs a little toner, this bottom needs a little toner here, and this really needs toner at the bottom here. I still have little chips up here, I'm going to sand this area and re-spray it and then see if I need toner or not. So now I can do quick tape offs and tone these areas. Okay I've let this dry for about 15-20 minutes and I will hit it again. When you're using these aerosol toners, you've got to go slow. It's really easy to make things too dark. Okay I think my toning on these pieces is done. So now I'll tackle this top and the damage here. So I'm going to sand this, sand this area as much as I dare. They use a lot of color in their finish too. And then I'll tone this top and I'm hoping that that will then cover this little damaged area here. Those little chipped areas didn't disappear like I hoped they would. I'm going to touch them up using a brush tip marker. Okay so I still have these touch-ups to deal with, but first I'm going to get the whole case ready. I'm going to spray a final coat on the entire case. I'm going to sand this top, everything else I'll do with a Scotch-Brite pad. This little chipped area here, I'm going to sand that a little bit. I'm going to use some dye stain. This is perfect brown dye stain, but I've thinned it out. These light edges are better done with a regular furniture marker. Alright, all my touch-ups done. Now I'm going to spray the entire case with satin lacquer. Okay I let this dry overnight. The final coat is really good, I feel a few little nits here and there. I think I'll go over it with the beeswax polish and the steel wool. I really like the, it really gives it a nice velvet feel and a soft sheen. Alright, there you go. This very nice carriage clock had a lot of sun damage and especially water damage all down this side. And you know this video shows how these factory finishes, which typically are nitrocellulose lacquer, are really repairable. They're completely compatible with the aerosol lacquers that I use for the repair. And boy, it looks pretty good.