Restoring Antique Leadlight Cabinet

[hobbiest]

We are currently cleaning and partially restoring an antique leadlight cabinet for use in a shop display.
I believe the outside and door frames are oak with interior shelves of a different timber. This is going to just be a quick spruce up because we need to use it ASAP!

The interior smells musty, the shelves appear to be raw timber and have a white discoloration. How should we clean/finish these to make them usable?

Also, what is the best way to stabilise a piece of leadlight glass that has multiple cracks? We would prefer to leave it in rather than having a hole in the door.

Any general advice/links on cleaning & finishing will be appreciated. Thank you.

[old1955]

Welcome to the forum.

[hobbiest]

Thank you, I have often come across this forum in searches and find the content very useful!

Added photos below. So far I have cleaned, used a little super fine steel wool on scratches and polished with a good quality brown furniture wax. It still looks distressed but much more attractively so! I figure it is easy to remove the wax in future, though it looks a bit golden now and we were going for a darker brown.

Still not sure what to do with the shelves and glass (see photo). We want to use it for display so obviously want the shelves to look clean but don't want to do anything hard to remove if we decide to do a proper restoration down the track. The glass just needs to be made safe.


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[NCArcher]

I don't think that is a white discolouration. I think the shelves are a light coloured timber stained dark. That is where the colour has worn through. Bit hard to tell from the photo. If the shelves are removable, take them out give them a light sand and a couple of coats of shellac. Won't change the colour much but easy to remove later.
To stabilise the glass place a piece of clear contact on the back.

[hobbiest]

I don't think that is a white discolouration. I think the shelves are a light coloured timber stained dark. That is where the colour has worn through. Bit hard to tell from the photo.
406525
Sorry, the other photo was the oak top, this is the shelf. Will take a better photo tomorrow.

[Robson Valley]

Go to the Parts Counter in any really big automotive dealership.
Ask for the glue that they use to stick the rear-view mirror onto the inside of your glass vehicle windscreen.
I don't think it's cyanoacrylate (CA) adhesive, something else.
Dribble some into the glass cracks.
Even if that doesn work, there will be no cosmetic change.
Then do as NCArcher suggests in #4.

You don't realize just how much you use the mirror until it falls on the floor.

[Xanthorrhoeas]

There doesn't seem to be a photo of the glass but the advice above (even if it is SuperGlue - the gel form being less likely to run everywhere) seems to be spot on to me. A clear silicone for glass would work as well. Beware the fumes from SuperGlue - they are nasty and wear rubber gloves, it loves to stick fingers together.

NCArcher's suggestion of sealing the shelves with shellac is a good idea too if you want to show they are timber.

Traditionally, bare timber shelves were often covered by a loose piece of an attractively coloured or figured paper, sometimes even leather with a decorative fringe cut at the front edge and hanging over the front of the shelves. And, before these great modern adhesives for glass, repairers often placed a thin metal bar behind the broken leadlight and wired the glass to it. I would not recommend that technique today.