Seth Thomas Clock Restoration

 This beautiful old Seth Thomas clock came to us needing a number of different things worked on.  The case was loose and easily came apart into multiple pieces,  the lower part of the door needed to be re-veneered, and the back panel was raw wood.
To finish the back panel, we used shellac which really let the burl shine through, and gave a beautiful contrast with the rest of the clock case.

Gluing the case together was fairly simple as we do that kind of work every day.

The tricky aspect of this job was really the re-veneer work on the door face.  What made it so tricky was the corner details.  There was an recessed area that needed to remain without veneer, but the leaflets needed to have the same grain pattern as the rest of the door.

So what we ended up doing making a tracing of the exact shape of each corner and then mask off (very very carefully!) the recessed area.  We could then glue a sheet of veneer over the door face.  Then, once the glue was set and dry our craftsman used the tracings to cut the veneer away and expose the masked off areas.  It was a tricky process, but did produce the results we were looking for.   Then the leaflets had to be carved to create depth and texture.  Finally, once the newly veneered door panel looked just how we wanted it, we stained and finished it to match the rest of the clock.

As I said, it was a tricky job.  But the end result was a beautiful clock with great detail and wonderful textural and color contrasts.