Stage 3: Back to the Drawing Board

After a long semester, I finally found the time to bring the chest back into the shop. Now that we're not pressed and I'm not trying to rush through finishing it, I can take my time fixing it up and pay attention to details. And boy are there details. It's like the more I work the more I find work to do.

Once we got the chest loaded back in to the shop I realized (as I hadn't paid the back any mind) that the backboard had been broken off and the cleats in the corners were coming loose. I removed the cleats, and sanded down where the original glue was. One of my colleagues brought an interesting point to light - that the glue used on this chest, vintage as it is, was probably an animal glue and being made from fats and natural oils could probably be loosened using a heat gun. I thought I'd use this method in a pinch, but the glue was so dry it sanded away easily. After cutting a fresh backboard and new cleats, I attached them to the underside of the chest using short screws, wood glue, and brads.

I followed the original glue line from the factory installment of the backboard's cleat, but realized once I attached it that the factory line wasn't flush with the back side of the chest. I've ignored it for now, but I'll be returning to this problem area once I get closer to finishing the project. It's on my list, but as of now it's not a primary concern. The plan is to remove the pieces, patch the screw holes with wood putty, and reattach. Next on my list, though, is removing the veneer along the bottom; again, since I had time to perform a fuller restoration, I decided to pull off that cracked stuff and replace it with nice cedar. The piece I picked out had more variety in its color patterns and no knots, and we'll be using it for the top while saving what we had originally cut for the bottom.

As you can see at left, the veneer has been removed, but we were still missing a piece on the upper left hand corner. This is another one of those pieces we didn't notice until we started turning it all around. To match the wood on the opposite side, we used a salvaged piece of poplar that shared a coloration in the grain. The poplar we used didn't have quite the same color, as the original wood has been weathered, but we plan on matching them using a stain to tie it all together. Once we got all these pieces on, we went ahead and flipped it over to start thinking about how we were going to cut a new piece of cedar.

As I was working, I noticed that parts of the trim on the lid and sides were starting to pull loose from the main body. With a gentle tug, the missing piece at right popped right off. Turns out the short sides of the lid are only factory attached using a tongue and groove with wood glue, and the glue had deteriorated. This piece coming off actually provided me with the opportunity to get down into the assembly and really clean up the trouble areas I had a hard time getting to when we were stripping the paint. In looking at the other side, I realized that someone had come back and tacked the piece on with brads, which leads me to believe that "Grandpa" had the same problem I did and reattached the good side. After sanding down the tongue and groove, I applied glue, tacked with brads, and clamped it on tight after getting it flush. 

While waiting for the glue to dry, I thought I might sand the trim a little to clean up problem spots and saw a corner where it was pulling away. I pulled all three off and performed a little hand sanding to clean up the area, which also allowed me to get in deep and remove that raised line you see. The same was repeated for the trim on the other two sides of the chest body and the trim along the lid. Then I applied glue and reattached all the pieces to their original position with brads. One of the trickiest parts was reattaching the trim along the bottom of the chest body. The trim itself measures a little less than 1/4" at its thickest and we didn't have any brads between 1/4" and 1-1/4" available. The former would come through the wood, but only enough to barely tack to the chest wall, and the latter would penetrate the inside wall of the chest. It was also near impossible to clamp the bottom trim to the chest, so tacking was our best option. We were able to cheat a little bit, as the bottom part of the trim lines up with the cedar used to form the chest floor (3/4" thick) and we could drive the longer brads into that while using the shorter ones fired at an angle through a narrower pieec into the chest to secure the top. We had another curve ball thrown at us when the trim started to pull away, leaving an 1/8" gap between it and the chest wall. Our solution for that was to have our foreman push against the top with a hammer handle to get it as seated as possible while I fired short brads to secure them. I'm hoping to come back with putty to cap the holes where we drove the brads (small though they are) and give it a seamless appearance.

The last thing I tackled today was a large gap between the front and side trim on the corner. When reapplying the trim, I went in order of: side, front, side; what I should have done is centered up the front first and adjusted the sides to meet up. Instead I made one corner flush to the other and moved on from there to attach the front. It still looks fine and is pretty much centered, and lines up with the original lines, which makes this gap kind of an anomaly. Thankfully the shop had a premixed walnut wood putty on hand, which works perfectly, as the original veneer is actually walnut and I'll be using a natural stain. I'm also matching the oak, cedar, and poplar to the walnut color, so ideally the filling will be indeterminable from the rest of the piece.


Work Time: 4.5 Hours
Total Time: 22 Hours