Reply To: Repair of an antique desk
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Today, I noticed, that the right rear leg is slightly lose. Turns out, that the rear bottom frame board is split all along its length and this had been repaired before. I can see traces of glue on the surface around the split. The joinery is interesting, but hard to describe. Look at the images. I need some time to take that in completely and understand the functionality.
The split on the fifth image doesn’t worry me. This is just a thin decorative insert that goes all around the drawer box. I will simply glue it together. This insert is damaged on all corners and I will replace the missing parts there. Hopefully, I can achieve a reasonable colour match. But the dark spot near the left dowel is actually missing wood. I think, I want to replace it to support the dowel.
On the second image, you can see the rest of a screw protruding from the tenon of the frame. It has broken, I found the head still in the other frame part.
On image #4, it looks like there were three layers of wood, but it is only two, the brighter piece has a step to form a groove for the bottom panel.
I found no traces of glue where the frame is screwed to the back.
I find new details each time I look at the images (the leg is back in place for now). This is quite interesting. I would really like to take the desk apart completely for further study, but I will wait at least another 10 years before I will do so. And I wonder, how original it still is. I am sure there are a lot of stories to read, but I don’t know, how.
My plan:
Glue the crack in the frame, clean up the remaining glue on the other parts of the frame and then put the leg back in place. I will use glue, where I found glue and I will add glue, where the inside frame is broken. It might be better to replace the inside frame, but I am not sure, if I can do it well, so I leave that for later.
I might not take off the top, but simply reglue the opened areas. I have the desk standing on one side now, and I can align everything quite easily now. I also checked for squareness of all corners and it looks pretty good. The desktop is bent down by 5 mm (1/4″) in the middle, which isn’t visible if you don’t know it. It hasn’t changed when I moved the desk around.
There are some bubbles on the veneer on the desktop, and I will try to fix that with hot water and animal glue. It looks pretty bad now, so I am not afraid to make it worse, I can’t.
Finally, I have to get some good advise for the surface finish of the desktop. I will clean it up completely and it can’t stay that way. I have seen how to make a silky surface with shellack, so I will try that. I suppose, a non-polished silky surface is less vulnerable than a french polish.
Please stop me, if you think, any part of this plan is bad or could be done better without too much skill. I need to fix this desk quickly, because my sisters need it back. So I want to concentrate on the stability and only fix a few things that seem easy enough.
Dieter
PS: The animal hide glue has arrived already, that was fast! Interesting smell 😉
PPS: I recently heard, that the desk had been repaired during or shortly after WWII. A window glass had been broken by an explosion nearby and fell on the desktop. Unfortunately, I don’t know the extend of the damage. The important part of the story was of course the explosion (bomb), not the desk.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Hugo Notti.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Hugo Notti. Reason: adding more pictures
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Hugo Notti.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Hugo Notti.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Hugo Notti.