So Why Hide Glue, Anyway? – Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in gorm Maine uh I'm busy working away on this uh Victorian desk it's got a lot of issues a lot of problems and it got me to thinking is there ever an easy job in furniture repair and that brings me to the subject of chairs which are often the bane of any furniture repair person's exist distance in this video uh I showed the repair and restoration of a queen an style chair uh it's got all the usual issues uh even additionally a uh a seat that has to be safe because it's part of a set the Finish has to be saved for the same reason it has broken pieces uh I can't take it apart completely because of the seat but every joint has to be dealt with individually and I like it because I also talk a lot about why we use high glue enjoy it these are two nice chairs they're part of a set of eight and the style is from the mid 18th century you could say queen an style but these chairs are reproductions uh they're made of mahogany and my guess is they're probably from the early part of the 20th century as these chairs fell into disrepair they were stored now we're going to fix these up this chair is in the worst shape it needs a new seat it needs a new rail before the seat it needs a new spindle down here uh because the ends have been repaired too many times this chair is in much better shape so I think we're going to restore this chair and use that one for parts in other words this rail is broken here I'm hoping I can use that one and this backs Splat is missing a section over here so I may use that backs Splat and once they're all repaired and uh tightened up they probably just need to be cleaned and waxed I'm going to start with the parch chair because I'm going to take the seat out and I feel like I'm going to pretty easily be able to get to these parts the other chair I won't be able to take apart so I want to make sure I can get these parts before I start working on the other one is okay so now I have the pieces that I want okay uh that was not difficult so now the question is can I get this piece which came from the other chair in here cuz remember I'm not taking the seat off uh but before I do that I know that the backs spat from that chair fits this rail cuz they came out of there but I need to make sure that this fits the crest rail and the Dows certainly look like they line up but I better try that first this one's not coming out I'm going to cut new dowels I could just go by the the length of their Dows which is 1 and e but I'll measure the existing holes are about 3/4 on this piece that hole is about a half this one is more like 3/4 so maybe 1 and an eighth is about right [Music] all right now let's see if we can get this in there got a ways to go here I'm going to switch this clamp to the other side so you can see boy I got a ways to go I want to scrape these tenants yeah good thing I'm checking this this this one doesn't want to fit in there it's just a just the width of this all right I think that'll go in there well I can hear the rush seat starting to complain um I'll just keep pressing this as far as I can uh worse comes to worse I'll have to trim these tenants a little bit but I want to avoid that or at least keep it to a minimum boy I'm close okay I'm ready to glue this and I think here now I can't really see but I feel like I'm going to I'm going to squirt some GL glue in on these tenons too I mean they have to be separated somewhat at this point so I'm just going to squirt some in there hope that it does some good I'm using hide glue on this project this comes premixed but you have to heat it up it's good stuff this chair is a good example of how you do need to take something apart once in a while for repairs H thought it would pop back together now I'll put the crest rail on dry just to yeah just to make sure these are in the right position I think I can go ahead and glue this up for for all right now we can uh see if we can glue up these joints so just like the back section I've got to see how much I can reglue and of course I'm limited by the fact that we're keeping the seat intact W I'm just noticing now it was not obvious before but this spindle's been repaired before there's a dow drilled into the spindle it's interesting because the other spindle on the other chair had been repaired also but there they used such a big Dow that then the the spindle split and you can see here where that Dow cause this part to split off also well I just opening I can you know all these joints I can spread it just enough to get glue on them on the joints and then bring it back together and hope for the best that looks good I think I'll apply some heat to the other side get this clamp out of the way [Applause] [Music] well I thought maybe it budged a little bit but I'm not sure you know there may be a nail in there this these marks I realized are marks from someone trying to get a nail out and this other one has a nail I'll try to wiggle it out good I better start marking these things I'm marking this one too even though I don't think this spindle is going to come out of there I'm not even going to try it see what's that there's so much movement here I'll try some heat [Applause] all right I think these side stretchers are good they're ready to glue this one seems fine so I got to figure out what I'm going to do about this uh big turning now this turning I'm not going to try to get out of there we have no idea how long these Dows are get a pretty good idea here though go all right I'm ready to glue this up you know all I can do is work as much glue as I can into these joints and clamp it up there's nothing we can do about these joints right now uh maybe later I'll use a little uh CA glue or something on them um we'll see but all the others with hide glue for for really good really good you know I could love the glue cool off a little bit you know cooler temperature and it would be a little thicker wouldn't be quite so messy but especially on a job like this I feel like the uh the heat the hot glue will just penetrate better and will help mix better with the uh old glue okay I'm going let this dry overnight this chair seems uh incredibly sturdy it's like a rock so now I'm going to clean the chair I've noticed on the bottom another placees this whiteness and stuff which makes me think it might might be a little bit of mold like will do something like that so I'm going to clean it with vinegar usually I'd mix a solution of like a one part vinegar two parts water this is super strong vinegar it's more concentrated so I'm going to use like 4 oz of vinegar and uh 24 oz of water something like that it's not critical so I'm just going to use a rrap and go over it gently uh remember this is part of a set I don't want to take off any color at all I just want to clean the superficial dust and dirt off of it and hopefully get that uh mold [Music] now I want to be sure to do the bottom of the seat [Music] okay I'm going to uh let this dry overnight okay this has had plenty of time to dry so the next step I'm going to go over it with a scratch cover using steel wool so scratch cover uh I suppose is just I think of it as like a lemon oil polish but it's got stain in it and the idea is that the stain won't affect areas with finish but they'll really uh hopefully help out with all these scratches and abrasions and stuff that you see here and I'll use steel wool to apply it just to help smooth it out there's some areas of the chair that are a little rougher and also it helps as an abrasive to clean anything else off the surface and of course that looks great at first but we won't really know till this dries all right I mean uh you can wipe off the scratch cover uh right away I'm just going to let this sit here for a while there's areas that I feel like might benefit from the oil sitting there for a while and then I'll wipe it off and let it dry all right this looks good I actually ended up letting this uh sit here overnight but uh seems fine I'm going to wipe this down with a clean uh Paper Shop towel getting off all the excess well this old uh old finish has really responded well to the uh scratch cover and uh it looks great uh I'm still going to go over it I just feel like no repair job would be complete without going over it with the uh beeswax polish I'm going to do that real quick all right now I'll go over with this rag this is a rag that I use for polishing for years it's saturated with the oil polished and I'm just going over it to pick up any excess and even it out a bit now I'll let this uh polish dry uh for about an hour while I go eat lunch okay I can uh just buff it down now well there you go this is a really nice uh reproduction side chair uh it's one of a set it uh came in in really rough condition but uh boy the Finish just responded so well to the scratch cover and the U beeswax polish and if you remember uh I used the old part chair and put in a new cross piece here and the new backs Splat cuz it was broken and I managed to uh you know get this apart enough where I've glued it but we managed to keep the old Rush seat I think it looks pretty good