New/old bedside tables

[Thumbthumper]

Hi all,

Not really sure where this thread should go as it's not really restoration, but I'm using old bits to create some new furniture.
Lots of the techniques are relevant to restoration. Please ask questions if you'd like to know more about a particular area.

Pretty photo heavy (with my terrible photography), and brief descriptions of what I was doing.

The pics below are of some orphaned Cedar washstand legs from the 1800's. We needed some bedside tables, so I decided to make some colonial styled (mini washstand) bedside tables.
Second pic is a bunch of rails that have been dimensioned ready for cutting the tenons.

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Drawer opening (dovetailed into the top of the legs), and the pocket screw opening on the side panels to attach the tops.

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Glue up time.

The tops have been cut out of a slab of Cedar ready for planing and thumbnailing.
Last pic shows the bottom shelf added. These are just nailed on (as most washstand bottom shelves were).

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The Cedar drawer fronts I wanted to use weren't quite wide enough, so I decided to use applied cock beading to make up the difference. I have repaired cock beading before, but I hadn't set drawer fronts with the beading from scratch before..
Bit flash for washstands :U

Pic one is making the bead with a Record 050, prior to trimming on the bandsaw.
Pic two is marking out the drawer front for the half blind dovetails.

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First pic is cutting the groove for the drawer bottom with a Record 044, which is then cut to size and rounded over (a rounding plane's good here) to fit against the bottom of the drawer sides.
They're like little architraves which give some meat to the drawer runners and the drawer bottom groove.

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Marking out the half blinds and final fit.
I wasn't too concerned here as there will be a rebate on the drawer front's side for the cock beading.

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My helper mixing up the horse sauce for the cock bead glue up.

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First drawer front with beading layed out, then applied.

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There's still lot's more to do.

I'll post some more pics as I go (unless you tell me to stop).

I still have to dimension the tops, make the backboards, smoosh (is that a word) the old polish from the legs over everything to even up the colour on the new Cedar parts.
Then it's time to polish the tables.

Stay tuned.

Cheers all,
Stu

[TermiMonster]

I like it:)

[orraloon]

:whs:
Good to see nice old hand tools at work.
Regards
John

[Chief012]

Looking good :2tsup:

If you have no use for the rest of your cedar slab I could get rid of it for you! :wink:

[Thumbthumper]

Looking good :2tsup:

If you have no use for the rest of your cedar slab I could get rid of it for you! :wink:

I was thinking of chipping it and using it for mulch :D

The slab was about 2700 by 500 and 25mm thick. The table tops are about 400 square, so I'm left with about 1800 length.
It was interesting on the highway from the Mid-North Coast to Canberra at 110 Kph with that thing on the roof racks. I'm sure I took off a few times :D
I don't have a project for it yet, but it's always handy to have some wide Cedar boards around.
Reasonable colour and figure.

It was a bit pale when I cut into it, so after I plane the surface and the edge molding, I'll leave it in the sun for a couple of days to redden it up.

Spent the weekend gluing up the drawers, making the drawer bottoms, adding drawer stops.
Photos soon.

[Thumbthumper]

Had a bit of time after work to finish off the drawer bottoms.

I had glued on the runner/groove strips yesterday (pic 1).
Pic 2 shows the mini drawer stops glued onto the drawer opening. I'm hoping they'll be strong enough.
If not I'll put some stops on the back of the runners.
This should be done before fixing the drawer bottoms for better access.

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Drawers in place with the drawer stops doing what they should do.
Pic 2 is the knobs. 10 minutes with a skew chisel on the lathe.

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Scraping the glue lines on the drawer bottoms.
Pic 2 is planing the sides and front to fit the drawer grooves. I use an offcut of the runner/groove strip to check the fit.
I won't be paying much attention to the finish of the drawer bottom (it is the bottom of the drawer bottom after all :D).


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Always drill some pilots for the nails to fix the drawer bottom to the back of the drawer.
The finished Drawer. I still have to fix the knobs, but it was too hot in the shed, and I didn't feel like cooking some more horse sauce.

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Next job is dimensioning the tops, side boards and the backboard.

Stay tuned.

Cheers all,
Stu

[Thumbthumper]

Went out to the hotbox that I call a shed to make a mock-up of the top molding.
I've decided that I want to make the corners rounded.

Thumbnail moldings (with hand tools) are fairly simple if you want square corners, but rounded corners area different matter.
I'm not a huge fan of routers for a job like this because they seem to always look ... well ... routed.

Firstly make a rebate on the end grain using a plane with a nicker (I used a Stanley 78). Then rebate the long grain.
This will clean up any blowout after planing the end grain.
Starting with the end grain again, I used a low angle block plane to round over the thumbnail.
For the long grain I used a hollow molding plane.
To round it over right up to the rebate I used a shoulder plane.

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This is where things get a bit trickier.
I marked out the curve on the rebate with a jar top, and used a carving gouge with the right arc to cut the curve.
I then pared back to the rebate with a chisel.
I used a combination of spokeshaves, LA block plane, shoulder plane and scrapers (after roughing out the curve with the bandsaw) to finish it off.

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I think I'll run with this.

I had to make a few compromises on the tooling, which prompts me to add the following tools to my wish list :doh:

Set of thumbnail/casement planes
Skew rabbit block plane (Stanely 140 maybe)
Skew rabbit plane with a nicker
Fine rasp or riffler set
Set of french curves (hard to believe the amount of times these would have been handy)

Oh well ...

Time for a glass of ale.

Cheers all ...

[Chief012]

[QUOTE=Thumbthumper;1601092]I was thinking of chipping it and using it for mulch :D

I was going to use it for kindling!

Great to see you using the Record 44, I have a Sargent and a Stanley 45 - I would love to use them however past experience playing with them makes me think that brain surgery would be easier to learn!! :doh:

[besttools4u.com]

Hi all,

Not really sure where this thread should go as it's not really restoration, but I'm using old bits to create some new furniture.
Lots of the techniques are relevant to restoration. Please ask questions if you'd like to know more about a particular area.

Pretty photo heavy (with my terrible photography), and brief descriptions of what I was doing.

The pics below are of some orphaned Cedar washstand legs from the 1800's. We needed some bedside tables, so I decided to make some colonial styled (mini washstand) bedside tables.
Second pic is a bunch of rails that have been dimensioned ready for cutting the tenons.

250333250331

Drawer opening (dovetailed into the top of the legs), and the pocket screw opening on the side panels to attach the tops.

250334250335250311

Glue up time.

The tops have been cut out of a slab of Cedar ready for planing and thumbnailing.
Last pic shows the bottom shelf added. These are just nailed on (as most washstand bottom shelves were).

250312250314250315

The Cedar drawer fronts I wanted to use weren't quite wide enough, so I decided to use applied cock beading to make up the difference. I have repaired cock beading before, but I hadn't set drawer fronts with the beading from scratch before..
Bit flash for washstands :U

Pic one is making the bead with a Record 050, prior to trimming on the bandsaw.
Pic two is marking out the drawer front for the half blind dovetails.

250316250317

First pic is cutting the groove for the drawer bottom with a Record 044, which is then cut to size and rounded over (a rounding plane's good here) to fit against the bottom of the drawer sides.
They're like little architraves which give some meat to the drawer runners and the drawer bottom groove.

250318250319

Marking out the half blinds and final fit.
I wasn't too concerned here as there will be a rebate on the drawer front's side for the cock beading.

250320250321

My helper mixing up the horse sauce for the cock bead glue up.

250322

First drawer front with beading layed out, then applied.

250323250336

There's still lot's more to do.

I'll post some more pics as I go (unless you tell me to stop).

I still have to dimension the tops, make the backboards, smoosh (is that a word) the old polish from the legs over everything to even up the colour on the new Cedar parts.
Then it's time to polish the tables.

Stay tuned.

Cheers all,
Stu

Very nice :2tsup:,,,,, i use to strip and repair antique furniture for 7 years for a small company ,,, really enjoyed repair some of the furniture we got ,,,, repaired many old pianos ,,,, now just do it if someone ask if i still do it ,,, i dont advertize about but word gets around


Home - Shop For Incredible Tools (http://besttools4u.com/)

[Thumbthumper]

I had some time to work on the tops today.

Smoothing the board.

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Rebating firstly across the grain using the nicker, then with the grain.

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Managed to get them both done this afternoon.
I also got the holes drilled in the drawer fronts for the knob dowels. Pic one is a test fit.
Note in the second pic, the top on the left has been sitting in the sun for a few hours. It's just starting to redden up.
They will have some of the old polish from the legs washed across them as well.

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Still a bit more to do.

Cheers all ...

[Thumbthumper]

Time to work on the side and back panels.

Pic one is a mock-up to get the side panel dimensions. The backs have already been roughed out.

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I used a combination of different spokeshaves to shape the side panels, and a compass plane to smooth the top of the back panel.
This plane is a Stanley 113.

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Time to cut more dovetails to fix the sides to the back.
I decided to go with very small pins. There's a good amount of fiddleback in the cedar panels, so smaller pins mean less end grain on display :U

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Next job will be to glue up these panels, and fix them to the tops. The sides will be screwed from underneath and the backs will be screwed to the back edge of the tops.
I can then fix the tops to the stands.
There's a couple of big old nasty nail holes in the legs that I'll plug with cedar. Then I can clean the legs before coating everything with it's first coat of shellac.

Cheers all.

[Thumbthumper]

Got into the shed for a while today.

Carved some long grain dowels and some wedged plugs to fix some of the nastier old nail holes.

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Glued the back and side panels together.
Drilled and countersunk the screw holes to fix the panels to the top from underneath.

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The panels are attached and the tops are now screwed to the frames.

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All that's left is to now wash down the old legs with steel wool and metho, and wash the old polish across the new cedar bits to even out the colour.

Then it's time to give them a good coat of shellac and a good polish. I'll glue the knobs in after I polish the drawer fronts.

Cheers all.

[Thumbthumper]

Almost there.

This is the part I like the most. The first coat of shellac.
The grain really pops.

First the drawers.
The drawer on the left has no finish yet.

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First shellac coat on the left table.
I gave the new cedar pieces a couple of coats as they were a bit dry.
It's amazing the deep red that comes out in the old legs (you don't get cedar like that nowadays).

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Both tables are now coated. They'll need a rub back with fine steel wool before polishing with my secret mix :;
The front leg on the right looks a bit weird because on a ray of sunlight.

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They're starting to look like real furniture now :U

I'll probable spend about a week polishing before I post the final glamour shots.

Cheers all

[Chief012]

Great work!! Looking very nice :D

[Thumbthumper]

Great work!! Looking very nice :D

Thanks Chief ...

This has been fun.
These washstand legs had been stored in an old shearing shed for about 30 years. Hornet nests in the mortices, covered in swallow poop.
Who knows where they were before that. Bought at auction for a pittance in the 80's.

Good for another 140 odd years.

[Thumbthumper]

All finished ......

Moving them in tonight.
Waxed the runners and buffed them all over with wax.
It's been fun.

Next project is a circa 1930, Art Deco kitchen dresser. This one will be a commission job :D
I'll take some photos and post at a later date.
It's covered in layers of paint at the moment, but I can see some lovely Walnut veneer underneath.

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Cheers all,
Stu

[Scott]

Great WIP Stu and a fantastic show of workmanship. Thanks for sharing :2tsup:

[fletty]

Hi Stu,
Beautiful work, I love seeing old components come back to life so sympathetically. Did you do anything extra to match old and new colour or did your secret polish mix look after it for you?
fletty

[Thumbthumper]

Hi Stu,
Beautiful work, I love seeing old components come back to life so sympathetically. Did you do anything extra to match old and new colour or did your secret polish mix look after it for you?
fletty

Hiya fletty,

What I do with new components, is wash the old polish (dirty) over them. I clean the old bits, rinse out the steel wool into a container, and then wash down the new bits. This helps to blend in the colour.

Red Cedar will also redden in the sun. Nowhere near the redness of the old cedar though.

I have in the past used Potassium Dichromate to deepen the colour of new pieces in restoration, but I try to avoid it because it tends to make the wood a bit lifeless.

Overall the best thing to do is to choose good coloured Cedar to work with :U

[artme]

You have done a fabulous job on those Thumbthumper!!!:2tsup::2tsup::2tsup:

Looking forward to your next job!!

[Chief012]

Great work thanks for sharing the project with us.

You have blended the pieces really well - thanks also for sharing this tip! :2tsup: