Heart-warming 200 year OLD CHAIR RESTORATION. Woodworm, rot and damage

I'm definitely lost. This is what happens when there is no road number. It's a pretty cool place, so I don't mind. It's a nice day trip to the countryside. Fortunately, I wasn't lost for too long and I found what I was looking for. And here it is. It's got many different names and this is just to give you an idea what it is. It's very old and rough estimate as far as the age is between 115 to 100 years old. But before we go any further, hello beautiful people and welcome to another video. As you can see, this is pretty much driftwood. It's as bad as it gets and I don't even know at this point if I can do anything with it. My only goal was to make it strong enough so I could actually sit on it and make it look decent. It was really badly warped and completely eaten by woodworms, as you can see. It was very fragile and honestly, I didn't know if it was saveable. As much as I was able to tell, this was elm, possibly oak. Both of them are very similar so it's difficult to say. And before you ask, because so many of you have asked me already on my social media, I'll tell you about this machine. This is basically sandblaster which has built-in vacuum so it sucks all the medium right back into the container, it recycles it and it cleans it from the paint or whatever you remove. But in order to power this you need a really big compressor. Using this machine is just as satisfying as watching me use it and I know that many of you want it so I'll put links in the description of the setup that I have but you can get a different compressor and ideally a bigger one than what I have. This is very powerful and when you have old varnish or paint it really quickly removes it and it's basically like vacuuming. As you can see, this is in real time. So it worked great for this project but because there was so much woodworm damage it also removed the superficial layer of wood leaving holes and exposed damage area. And fortunately because of what I'm about to do next this was necessary anyway so it wasn't a problem but you need to keep that in mind. If you're working on a flat surface like what I'm doing now there is hardly any dust or debris and you could easily do it in your workshop. If you're working on a small piece and the nozzle doesn't cover the entire thing there will be some spillage but it's still not a lot. As you can see the end was broken off but it was still attached so I decided to use expanding glue. Never used it before but I heard that it would just get everywhere and create a very good bond and I think it did because it was very strong and I felt good about it. As you can see this was basically firewood and I cannot stress enough how bad it was. And I had two options. I could either just remake every single part of this chair or I could somehow figure out a way to preserve what I had and that's what I went with. This was my first time using wood hardener and I was actually very curious to see how well it would work so I made sure that I followed directions and I soaked everything really well to make sure that the fluid would penetrate the wood. By the way the wood was so incredibly dry that it just soaked everything that I put on it. As I was quietly questioning my decision to embark on this project Hugo came to offer some encouragement. You guys always say how much you like Hugo so there he is. Anyhow, let's get back to work. The chair is not going to restore itself. When I got to the seat of the chair you can really see how dry it was because I literally had to pour the liquid on it. That's how quickly it was soaking everything in. It was a really hot day so I left it outside to dry. I haven't really worked on many chairs, period and have never worked on anything like this. This was the most difficult and challenging project for many reasons and I actually had to do or try some things I had never done before. I don't know if there is a perfect way of repairing woodworm damage. I've never seen it if there is. I decided to use wood filler with hardener which kind of works like bondo. I figured that this would be a good way to strengthen the wood hardener that I've already used and also it was similar color to the final finish I was going to put on this. This was the first time I was using it and I followed the directions on the can and I wasn't happy with it. First of all, when it was dry it was still kind of tacky or gooey and it was a real pain to remove it so I don't recommend it. But on top of that, it just didn't do a very good job. This is probably a good time to say huge thank you to all of you wonderful and generous people. First of all, I get so many birthday wishes which was super nice and I appreciate it. And also, as always, I wanted to say if you like my content and you want to support the channel you can do it via BuyMeACoffee by becoming a member of this channel for extra content or by just liking, commenting and subscribing. That's all free. And I will love you forever. After removing the excess wood filler I fixed the crack that was on the bottom of the seat. You probably thought that with my new fancy machine I wouldn't need to do any sanding, right? I wish. So I'm not only sanding because the finish from the sandblaster wasn't good enough it's because I wasn't sure what it would do to the wood filler that I just put in. And also, I'm using a foam pad just to make sure it was more gentle on the curved surfaces. As I mentioned, the wood filler that I used left sticky, a bit tacky residue so I had to remove it with mineral spirit before I sanded it. One of the spindles was also missing I think someone just broke it and part of it was left in the hole so I had to remove that piece of wood with a chisel. And because of the big compressor that I got for my sandblaster now I'm able to use some of the air tools that I've had for a long time and I've never been able to use them. If you remember from the picture at the very beginning of the video the original color of this chair was probably dark likely something like walnut or mahogany so that's what I decided to do. This is light walnut and this is spirit-based stain but this is also just the base for what I'm going to do next so don't worry, this is not the final look. As you remember, I mentioned that the wood filler didn't do a very good job and I was planning on making some additional repairs but I had to apply the color first. Do you remember the missing spindle? So this is probably the most challenging part of this project because I had never turned anything on a wood lathe before so I didn't even know if I could do it. Obviously I've seen other people do it but I had never tried it myself so I honestly didn't know if I could actually do it but I just went for it. The reason I made it hexagonal shape is because it's a bit closer to a dowel and it's just easier to start turning and because this was my first time I needed all the help I could get. If you've never done woodturning like me it's a bit intimidating to begin with but you quickly get the hang of it and it's actually real fun. I've had this lathe for about a year and a half I got it from Lidl, it's really cheap and not the greatest but it did the job and for small jobs like this, this is actually enough. It definitely took my time and I'm sure it took way longer than it should've but I wanted to make sure that I actually did it right and I kept comparing it to one of the spindles I had to make sure that it was exactly the same. And what do you know? I actually managed to make a spindle! Not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of myself. Do you remember I had to break the screws at the beginning of the video because I couldn't get them out? So what I'm doing now this tool is used for making plugs or like short dowels so I'm basically removing the wood around the screw to make it easier to get it out and I'm gonna plug the hole with a new dowel just to make it strong and so I can actually put a new screw through it. And this is why I had to stain the chair so I could actually choose the right color of the wax. If you've never used these before this is super simple and normally you would use a lighter or something to melt it with but because it was super hot outside it was very soft so I could just rub it into all those little holes and cracks. And yes, there are probably million little holes and cracks and I'm sure I didn't get all of them and I wasn't even trying because it was pretty much impossible. I just wanted to make it look as good as I could and also I was not going to make it look new so I just did the best I could. I found high-grid sandpaper to be the easiest way to remove the wax and it didn't matter because I was about to apply lacquer toner so even if I removed a little bit of the stain I would cover it with lacquer toner anyway. When you have a piece of furniture and the stain doesn't absorb evenly or you have variations in color, patches, repairs or things you want to hide or blend in lacquer toner is amazing for those purposes. After I finished applying lacquer toner I let it dry and I put everything together. I attached the legs the way they were attached originally with screws. The ones I used were a bit longer and as you can see there is a hole but in a bit I'll make little plugs that I'll use to cover those holes with. As you remember the chair was very warped and wobbly so I had to sand the ends of the legs to make it level. Here's me making those two missing plugs for the screws and I was pretty happy with myself, everything was going well until I put the backrest on. I've got a couple of theories what happened but because the chair was in pieces I think that over the years the back kind of straightened out as it was bent originally and it just didn't fit any longer and as you can see the gap is just so huge that there was no way I could bend it to make it work. It was incredibly disappointing because I put all that work and effort into this project so because I wanted to post the video and I wanted to finish it the only thing I could think of was to take the backrest apart and to make it work. I had to cut through the screws to take those three pieces apart and as you can see I was able to make the bottom two pieces work with some clamping and a lot of pressure but unfortunately even though this part was ok the top piece didn't fit, it just wasn't the same shape so I attached it the best I could and here it is. I hope you guys liked the video and see you in the next one!