Recreating a Carved Piece for an Eastlake Table - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. This is a little piece from a Victorian table that I've been asked to reproduce. I don't have the whole table here, someone just sent me this piece. It's got these mortises cut in the back, they're at 90 degrees, which tells me that this is from an apron of a Victorian table, the apron of the boards that go under the top, and it's on the corner, so it's a decorative piece that goes on the corner. It's got this little carving here, this nice carving, which I sort of associate with East Lake Furniture. I've got a nice piece of walnut here, it's on the lighter side, so I'll use the lighter sections of this to make this, it'll be easier to match up when it's done. So the first thing I want to do is rip my blank piece of walnut to this width, and then I'm going to set up and cut these mortises. Wow, I just realized I was getting ready to rip this board, and I took a second look at this thing, and the grain's going this way, the grain's going the short way. So I don't need to rip it, I need to cross cut it to this width. Now, off camera, I cut an extra piece. Just to experiment for cuts like this, you need something to go by, so this area here I've marked good to be my, I think it's the best spot, this is my extra piece. Yeah, that's lined up really well with the inside edge of the mortise, so now I cut my good piece, and then set up to do the other side of the mortise. So now I think the next thing I'll do is cut these 45s on the back of it. Okay, so now I'm going to route this cove in the outside of this. Remember I've made two of these throughout all these machining processes where I have to set up the machines, I'm going to make two. I've also cut and drilled this block of wood which I'm going to attach to the back of it to give me something to hold onto during the routing process. You'll notice I also put the double stick tape on the end of this block too. Okay, so the next step is to cut this little line on the perimeter here. I've got to carve it. I've already been experimenting on my extra sample piece and was having difficulty getting around this curve, so I've actually made a little template which I will clamp down to help me get around that curve. And just a note here, I'm going to be doing some carving here, I am not a carver, this is not a video about carving. It's a video about how I'm going to hopefully somehow manage to carve these pieces. So now I've got to lay out what I'll call the compass design here. Same thing, just lines. I've got to drill a hole, I've got to locate that hole, drill a little hole, and then do these straight lines. Okay, I've got my hole drilled, lines drawn, but I realized I need to lay out these little curly cues so I can define the ends of these lines. You know, one of the great things about this piece is that the carving on the original piece is horrible, which is good for me because it's going to give me a little bit of room here. Even the curly cues are really terrible, they're different sizes. I'm going to try to do a little bit better job. Now I've drawn my lines for those little curly cues, I'm going to actually clamp my French curve in place and use it as a guide. Right now I'll do the straight lines, I'll use a straight edge as a guide and clamp it down along my lines and just use the gouge to make the lines. Okay now I've sanded everything with 220 and I'm going to stain it, I have some stain here some white walnut stain, I experimented already on some of the scraps, I think it really gives me a good background color. Okay, I've let the stain dry for five or six hours, the dry time on the can says 30 minutes, but I gave it extra time because it's a little cool in the shop. Now I'm going to brush on a coat of shellac. And later this evening I'll probably put, off camera, I'll put another coat on and tomorrow we'll glaze it. I did put on a second coat of shellac, let it dry overnight. Now I'm going to sand it, I'm sorry, with 500 really gently, I don't want to cut through. And then I'm going to glaze it with asphaltum glaze. So asphaltum is exactly what it sounds like, it's some kind of tar. And I'll mix it into a clear glaze coat, I've already done that. And I'll put it on, try to recreate the distressing I see here. So I've mixed a little of the asphaltum in some glaze coat here. The glaze coat is just a medium, it's thick, the kind I buy is extra thick. And it's made just for this purpose, adding oil colors and things like that, in this case we added the asphaltum. And now I'm going to apply it to my little piece here. I will put it all over the entire piece, wipe it all the way off, and then I'll go back and try to mimic what I see in the original, leaving bits here and there. Okay my glaze has dried overnight, and now I'm going to just seal that in with some flat aerosol lacquer. It's not really flat, but it's the lowest luster that they have. Okay the lacquer is dried, I actually already unscrewed this and detached it from the block that was holding it. So here I've made this piece for someone else, I'm not restoring this table, so this doesn't match this exactly, but I'm not too worried about it, the person that's going to restore this will finish up any color work that needs to be done. But I think it looks pretty good.