Restoring a Slant Top Desk - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Here we have a really nice mahogany slant-top desk and it's not in bad condition but it does need some repair work. The main problem is that these drawer rails are getting pushed out. Also on these drawers there's numerous places where this little eighth inch mahogany bead molding is missing. Okay, so I need to take this back off. It's nailed on. So I'm going to try to push the back out a little bit so I can get to those nails. Yeah, this was glued in all the way across. Now with the drawer runner out of there, let's see if we can push this rail back. There it goes. Now I'll take out the dust cover and drawer runner of this drawer and see if this rail will go back. Okay, so I've clamped the rails on this side because I don't want them to move, while on this side I'm going to wiggle these as much as I can to clean off the glue, the old glue, and then re-glue it. Okay, I've cut these pieces now to fit where the pieces were missing, my new pieces. I blew them in. You know, I'm putting the tape on the side of the cabinet here, side of the drawer, I'm sorry, and then pushing it in with my thumb and then pulling this tape tight. So I'm pulling it into that drawer front. I started here because I wanted my 45 to match up perfectly, that was the most important thing, and now I'm working my way down. Alright, the rail's glued back now where it's supposed to be, both places, and now I've got a cut of veneer patch to fit in here. Someone had patched it before, and I'm going to use their same cuts. Yeah, that's a pretty good fit. I'm leaving this wide, I'll shave that down later. This tape's just going to hold this in place while I clamp it. Once again, this tape is just holding it in place while I clamp it, because I can't tape very well there, so I'm clamping these. Okay, I'm also going to tape these little gallery pieces into position. It's actually staying there by itself really well. I'm going to tape it. That's pretty good. Now I've got another one over here to do. You can see here all the old glue where these drawer runners were rabbeted into the side of the cabinet, and they glued them, or someone glued them, all the way along the whole width of the cabinet, and that's a mistake. And that's one reason when this drawer side shrunk, possibly why then they pushed the front rails out of the cabinet. What I'm going to do is I'm going to scrape the old glue off. When I reinstall these, I'm going to glue them just in the front area a couple of inches, and I'm going to nail them in the back. And hopefully that'll allow the side to expand and contract. Anytime you're going to attach two pieces of wood together perpendicular to each other, they can't be glued together solidly. This piece, this side of this cabinet, is going to expand and contract seasonally, you know, as much as a 64th of an inch, maybe a 32nd of an inch, which is exactly how far those front rails were pushed out. So I'm only going to glue a couple of inches in the front. And no, you're not going to eat any hide glue. I'm going to nail this in the back here. Okay, now I can reinstall the back. That seems very secure. Okay, I've completed all the repairs to the desk, and now I just need to wax it up. Okay, looks pretty good.