Chris Roe Furniture Restoration

Gluing and clamping a antique balloon back chair

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Christopher Roe

Before the top arched rail could be glued back,four new beech dowels were turned on the lathe and the old broken dowels were carefully removed with a slightly undersized drill bit and a quarter inch chisel.

These chairs are difficult to glue up because there are no square edges and pressure must be applied to a joint when glueing up.So the thing to do is to make a plywood jig that wraps around the curve of the chair back and turns a curved surface into a square surface.A sash clamp can then be used to apply pressure to the joint whilst the hot pearl glue is drying out.

Posted in antique chair restoration, antique furniture, Chair repairs, cheshire, christopher roe, Furniture conservation, Furniture repairs, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, manchester, north west, salford | Tagged Antique chair restoration in Manchester | 2 Comments

Gothic American Steeple Clock

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Christopher Roe

This clock is in quite a bad way,a result of a break in. The thieves smashed the clock case and the door is missing altogether.

Restoration will involve repairs to what is left of the case and a reconstruction of the missing door.The clock movement will be taken to a specialist in the repair of clock movements.

Furniture Restoration Manchester

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Chair repair and restoration

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Christopher Roe

A pair of late Victorian mahogany balloon backs,part of a set of eight dining chairs.Made from fine Honduras Mahogany,these chairs are beautifully made and are of great quality.The makers label is still intact found underneath the back of the front rail.(please see photo)

One chair has a very bad break on the right-hand back upright,where the back and side rail meet with mortise and tenon joints.With this break the balloon back has also broken on the lower and upper section of the curve.

The second chair is less damaged with the top curve of the balloon back broken at the dowel joints.

A repair has been attempted some time ago on the first chair and unfortunately a modern synthetic glue has been used.Never use modern glues to repair Antique furniture,they tend to not be as effective and it makes it much harder to repair and restore the piece in the future.The old pearl glue is reversible and will soften with warm water,modern glues are not reversible and can only be removed through time consuming scraping with a chisel or scalpel.

The first stage is to carefully clean of the old glues from the damaged joints and glue back any loose small pieces.

More challenging restoration work from Furniture Restoration Manchester.

Posted in advanced woodwork, antique chair restoration, antique furniture, Chair repairs, cheshire, christopher roe, French polishing, Furniture conservation, Furniture repairs, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, lancashire, manchester, north west, salford | Tagged Antique chair restoration in Manchester | Leave a comment

Table surface restoration

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Christopher Roe

A very attractive early 20th century hand painted satinwood occasional table.The damage here is a burn mark to one small area of the surface,probably caused by a lit cigarette falling out of an ash tray.The burn has gone through the surface polish and burnt the veneer.

Restoration involves several steps,unfortunately i didn’t take an initial photo of the burn mark and have started the restoration.

First step is to use a reviver,an assortment of ingredients carefully measured and mixed and then applied to the damaged area.The reviver will remove burnt areas within the polish surface and some of the black from the burnt veneer.The next step is to apply a brush coat of yellow ochre only to the small burnt area,this changes the damage from black to yellow,lighter than the surrounding wood colour.Now I fill in and build up the open damaged areas of polish with brush coated transparent shellac.Please see photo’s so far in the restoration process of this fine quality satinwood table.

Posted in antique furniture, cheshire, christopher roe, French polishing, Furniture conservation, Furniture polisher, furniture polishing, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, lancashire, manchester, north west, salford | Tagged Cigarette burn restoration | 1 Comment

Staining and polishing

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Christopher Roe

The new repairs are carefully levelled,bleached and stained to match the original surfaces.The surface is grainfilled with pumish powder and a body of traditional transparent shellac polish is applied. Followed by an application of handmade traditional wax polish to mute out and mellow the finish.

Posted in advanced woodwork, antique furniture, cabinet maker, cheshire, christopher roe, French polishing, Furniture conservation, Furniture polisher, furniture polishing, Furniture repairs, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, furniture staining, lancashire, manchester, marquetry, north west, salford | 1 Comment

Stringing and crossbanding

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Christopher Roe

From previous old repairs losses in the width of the central leaf have resulted in the outer stringing and crossbanding not matching with the outer leaf profiles.Now that the loss in width has been made up the veneer can be recut so the stringing lines and tulip wood crossbanding will match up to make a perfect oval when the outer leaves are opened out.Replacement boxwood stringing and Tulip wood crossbanding is used where the original was missing.

Posted in advanced woodwork, antique desk, antique furniture, cabinet maker, cheshire, christopher roe, French polishing, Furniture conservation, Furniture polisher, Furniture repairs, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, lancashire, manchester, marquetry, north west, salford, veneering | Leave a comment

Relaying the veneers

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Christopher Roe

Damaged areas of the veneers are replaced with a matching flame mahogany veneer.This is cut in with a flowing design blending with the existing grain direction and pattern.The veneers are laid in the traditional manner with hot animal glue and a veneer hammer.

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Process of repairing the oak substrate

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Christopher Roe

The leaf is made up of two central boards and two strips of oak edging these at either end. The central boards have separated and lost dimension due to shrinkage and a previous poor repair.The edges are rejointed with use of a router and the loss of material made up with a thin strip of oak cut into the joint.The thin strip is glued up first to one side with use of hide glue.When this has gone of further strength is added with biscuit joints,the two halves can then be assembled and glued up again with hide glue.The two strips of oak at either end have been cut to release the central boards again from a previous shoddy repair,this unfortunately renders them useless.Replacement end strips are made from old well seasoned quarter cut oak. These are tongue and grooved into the central boards and the oak substrate is completed.

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Dismantling : Pembroke Table stage 1

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Christopher Roe

To begin the table top is unscrewed from the base frame and the three leaves separated.The veneer needs to be removed from the central leaf,in order to repair the underlying damaged substrate.The central fan decoration must be held securely together and stabilized before lifting.If you were to steam this parquetry of with a wet cloth and a hot iron ,each individual segment would swell and then shrink to a different size .In short ,you would not be able to get it back together again.The solution is to lay white tissue paper over the fan design and paint it with a solution of paraloid b -72 this bonds all the segments together and allows a complex design of many veneers to be lifted as one piece whilst maintaining stability.A large palette knife is heated on the surface of a hot iron .I begin at one edge of the table top where the veneer is already lifting .The hot knife is carefully eased in between veneer and substrate.The animal glue used to bond the veneer to the substrate will begin to soften.Gradually working the knife throughout the surface,the veneer is completely released from the substrate.The back of the veneer is carefully cleaned with warm water to remove all the old animal glue.To ensure the veneer remains flat during the drying process it is placed between sheets of brown paper and put into a press.

Posted in advanced woodwork, antique furniture, cabinet maker, cheshire, christopher roe, Furniture conservation, Furniture polisher, Furniture repairs, furniture restoration, furniture restoration techniques, furniture restorer, lancashire, manchester, north west, parquetry, salford, veneering | 3 Comments

Analysis of restoration needed

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Christopher Roe

The structure of the top of this table is made up of a one large rectangular section and two half moon leaves which fold up and rest on a fold out gate leg to form an oval. Each table section consisted of a quarter sawn oak substrate.The oak boards are edged on the end grain sides with strips of oak jointed with a tongue and groove joint. The grain running perpendicular to the central boards.

I believe this design of substrate is only found on furniture designed by Thomas Sheraton. The reason for them is that the table is only veneered on one side only and will want to pull the table top out of shape.Modern practice is to veneer a substrate on both sides.The strips are to try and maintain stability,to keep a flat table top.

Unfortunately the damage caused on this table is because of its original construction.The central boards want to expand and contract as all wood naturally does but the end strips do not allow this.Also you have two separate boards expanding and contracting in different directions,so the veneer glued to the surface is pulled in different directions resulting in a buckled torn veneer.( please see photographs) Further damage has been done by previous repairs,the central veneer has been scraped down in an attempt to level the surface after the table has been cut and reglued to try and solve a split in the table,poor alignment leading to scraping the surface down to get it level and going through the veneer.

Further losses include missing tulip wood crossbanding,missing stringing lines,the boxwood stringing lines nolonger meet to make the oval design after loss in width to the central board due to previous repairs.Edge banding is missing,or replaced with the wrong woods. Surface veneers are lifting in many areas.The surface has a shadow of a cloth mark,causing discolouration from where the sun has bleached the surrounding veneer but not where the cloth was.Two of the mortise joints in the table base have worked loose.The surface polish finish has deteriorated and become opaque hiding the beauty of the flame Mahogany grain beneath.