Tall Clock RESCUE!

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in gorm Maine I really enjoy this video on the repair and restoration of the hood of an antique long case clock uh typically I won't do a partial restoration but this Hood was in desperate need of repair and a lot of these are unique to these antique clocks uh you're going to see a lot of uh intricate veneer repairs a lot of percussing one of my favorite words uh there's a lot of touch-up work and spot finishing techniques and there's also an appearance of my four-legged assistant who was always very interested in any work that had to do with hide glue so enjoy the video subscribe hit like and feel free to share it on any other platforms so I'd appreciate it this is the Bonnet of a long case clock uh from England about 1830 I don't have the case here I only have the Bonnet that's what I'm going to repair now it's got a lot of veneer problems this uh banding is popping off along here luckily we've got a lot of pieces that go with that uh there's boards that are coming loose uh that were glued joints uh also the door has uh a small veneer problem the veneer is the wood or veneer is fractured in this area here I don't know what's going on there but I've got to remove this glass and reinstall it it wasn't installed correctly last time someone did it and uh I'll figure that out then this upper section here you know the whole molding here is kind of curved back that's just something that's happened with age we're not going to do any even attempt to do anything about that I I think I'll start with the uh the this case itself cuz I've got all these pieces uh and then see what I've got here I'm sure I'll just while I'm doing that I'll discover all the other places that might be loose so I kind of like to start you know on the inside work my way out and this board I don't know what you call this board exactly but it's a little facing board which surrounds the clock face I notice it's loose it's attached to the side and the side is loose so uh I think I need to glue the side back and get everything in place here first all right while I'm letting this dry I'll uh start on the door I don't think I need to take these hinges off yet uh this one has a screw protruding I really don't like that but I'm going to leave it alone for now I'm going to take this putty out and get the glass out [Applause] first so I've been working and working along the edge of this uh glass trying to get it clear of the putty but the glass seems really tight in the frame frame and really hasn't doesn't want to move and of course there's there's putty on the other side of this piece of glass you know between the glass and the frame so I think I'm going to try to gently heat up this side of it while pushing down as much as I dare try to get it to start to move once you get your knife under this loose veneer it's always difficult to know how far to push it so I'm just gently probing not too hard you know I feel like if I forced hard enough I could probably take all this veneer up but it's down you just sort of have to play it by ear and probe as much as you dare [Music] [Music] [Music] part of this veneer didn't go down it's still up maybe I needed more clamping pressure but I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to warm this up loosen this up a bit and I may uh then down here at the end of the piece of veneer remove a little bit of veneer so that I can push this flat again oh this is good I didn't realize that the the piece of veneer actually extended all the way under the rest of the veneer uh this little piece of uh Holly and so I don't really have to trim it now I can glue it down and it should afterwards then I might just have to trim off the end a little bit and then replace then I glue down the piece of Holly when I glue this down all right well I'm waiting for this to dry I'll get back on the door I've got loose veneer here and there's this crack which always worried me and I I'll work some glue in there and I can clamp all this down at once so note when I'm gluing this up uh the piece of veneer I cut isn't uh thick enough even it's a nice old uh antique veneer that's pretty thick it's not as thick as this veneer on the door frame so I cut in additional piece I'll glue down two pieces to make up the thickness for so I've got uh two areas of concern here uh one's not bad I got this this piece is cracked right along here this weak point and glue that back this part's a little more troubling uh this veneer is broken I have the pieces but they're just hanging out in the middle of the thin air so I think what I'm going to need to do is cut this back a little bit and glue a new piece of uh veneer in there you'll see that I cut two pieces uh once again to uh get the required [Music] thickness I think I'm ready now to start gluing down the curve banding uh along the line here uh we have quite a few of the pieces and there's a couple missing for all right well I'm waiting for this glue to dry I can get back on the door right next to my patch there I had a a little bit of misalignment so I heated it up I've reamped it I think I can take these clamps off now these have been on for about 4 hours and then continue gluing that little banding for oh wow what of my pieces is misaligned so I I should be able just to heat it up and clamp it back down again okay so now I've just got uh two places where I've got to put in some uh new V here for okay while these dry I can get back on the door again so yesterday while working on this door frame uh in two places this delicate veneer that overlaps or sticks out past the frame cracked in two places I had to glue it I did that off camera I'm sorry but what I decided was uh what I need to do is install the glass because the glass will help support this piece of veneer while I then finish sanding and finishing the front for for for okay so the glass is in the door I'm going to let that set for a little while and in the meantime I'll get back to this little row of banding I've glued down [Music] now I'll see if I can clean this uh glue off with a damp rag now I'll sand my new patches of wood okay I've sanded this whole little edge of banding here with 220 I filled in some of the spaces between the pieces of the ear and uh I think now the it seems great The Next Step the color is good I'm not going to do any standing ahead of time I'm going to go ahead and seal this with a couple coats of shellac and uh once I have it really leveled off the with the shellac really smooth then I'll go back and do my touch-ups and color work now I've also been sanding my repair areas on the door frame and now I'm going to go over the whole door frame just lightly with this 220 and then I'll give uh I'm going to brush a COA shellock on the frame and the little banding above the door so I put another coat of shellac on last night and I put extra amount on my new pieces and now I'm going to sand with 500 uh I hope you can see that how grainy the wood is it's very grainy so what I want to do is just sand the shellac try to level that out so the grain is all filled in you can also see on the door although when I applied the coat it looked beautiful but as it dries you know it looks a little uneven because it's just my first coat so I'm going to sand that with 500 and give that a coat too and once again especially emphasizing getting my new pieces of wood all the grain filled in so this is uh leveled off pretty nice you know pretty well I mean it's not really level there's still ups and downs between the pieces of veneer I didn't try to make this level but the Finish is leveling off nicely I think you can still see where uh my new piece still is a little grainy you can see it cuz there's white in the grain but generally speaking it's uh done pretty nice the next coat should look great so after I've sanded as much as I can with 500 there's still shiny places those are Low Places I'm not going to try to cut down to those I'm not trying to level this off uh but I'll go over it with a Scotch bite gray pad and that sort of gets down in there and uh takes the gloss off and is is helpful before the next coat all right I uh I let this coat uh dry overnight uh it looks a lot better than the than the first coats naturally uh so what I'm going to do is I'm going to sand this again with 500 and then go over with the gray pad and now I'll then color in my patches and and other touchups and stuff that I need to do all right now I'll wipe these uh areas off with some paint dinner and uh do my touchups I'm going to start start off by uh brushing on some medium brown Walnut D stain for for okay that's uh all for now I'm going to let this stain dry it's a fast drying stain uh I'll give it an hour or maybe two and then I'm going to pad some finish on here and we'll see what it looks like okay stains dried uh now I'm going to pad some finish on uh I like using this uh lacquer that's made for French polishing for all right I'm going to let this coat dry overnight and uh my touch-ups are still light I think I'll probably uh tone them a little AOL tomorrow all right it's not looking bad but when I patted it I did take off some of the color on my touchup so I should have sealed it with aerosol first but what I'm going to do now is use aerosols to get my final color on my touch-ups all right I'm going to use a medium brown Walnut [Applause] toner so uh the medium brown Walnut toner was kind of the right color but it wasn't is n dark enough so I just sort of dusted them with a little extra dark walnut I think it looks good let's see yeah I think that uh I think that looks good so I think I'm going to give these uh areas a quick coat of uh aerosol Locker just to seal in my color uh just these areas here uh before I start padding again all right my uh lacquer dried so now I'm going to uh Pat it again with the pading lacquer all right I think I can uh start the waxing process now uh I'm just using some past wax I got from the hardware store but it has brown coloring in it it's brown wax there's so many little nooks and crannies and Corners here that uh as I wax if any you know it'll help color them up kind of like working like a scratch cover kind of thing I'm also using a little steel wool here here just to help uh clean and smooth the surface a stencil brush helps with the corners all so there we go this is the uh Bonnet of a early 19th century tall case clock and it had a quite a few problems with the banding along here the door had a crack in it uh the glass itself was misaligned the panels were cracked but uh everything went back where it was supposed to I think it looks pretty good for