Fabricating a Carved Settee Leg

 From time to time we have something come to us that not only has a broken leg, but the broken off part is completely gone!  Now usually we like to put any broken off parts back onto the piece, as then the wood is all the same age, and it will continue to age at the same pace as the rest of the item of furniture.  But, in a situation like this, where the broken off piece is completely gone,  we have to start from scratch and do our best to choose wood that will blend with the rest of the piece.

 In this case,  we had a beautiful Settee come in with one of  the more decorative front legs broken off.  The Settee is made out of mahogany so we put together some small pieces of matching mahogany and attached
them to the leg, as you can see in the first picture.   You can see in the second picture that we have taken some of the excess wood off and have drilled holes along the inside curve of the leg to make hand carving a bit easier.  Next a template of the leg shape was attached to the leg, for more refined removal of excess wood.  You can see in the 4th picture that all the excess wood has been removed and the fine shaping is ready to begin.
 The leg carving turned out very well.  It looks almost exactly like the other two on the settee.   Now it is off  to the finishing department.  It is their job to make the epoxy line disappear and of course to stain and finish the entire settee.  It is not particularly often that we have to do this kind of work, but fortunately we have the guys with the skill to pull it off.   Do you have a job you think is impossible?   Bring it to us, clearly this job was not enough of a challenge, so your impossible repair might be just the challenge they need!

Rocking Chair with Carved Back Panel

 We recently had this rocking chair come in to our shop for repairs.  One of the stretchers had broken which in turn caused the one of the rockers to break off as well.  While this kind of thing happens fairly often, and we get broken rocking chairs in all the time,  this particular rocker has such interesting styling, that I became very curious about it's origins.  Now, you all get to see what information I have found out about this piece.

The first thing to note, is that there is a very unique sticker on the underside of the seat.  Most antique furniture has no markings by the maker, they simply relied on us recognizing their unique style.  But this chair gives us a very good clue to it's age and maker via the sticker.  You see, around the beginning of the 1900's through the 1940's  Grand Rapids Michigan had a furniture making Heyday.  So the sticker on this Rocking Chair tells us that the chair was made in the early part of the last century.

What really drew me to this rocker originally, was the carving on the back.  I had never seen something like it until this Rocking Chair came in.  The figure on the back seems to be a Spanish Explorer,  and from comparing images,  it is most likely Cortez or Ponce de Leon.  The seat is also round with little notches carved out giving in a drum like look.  In trying to get a better idea of the age of this chair, I found several similar chairs, each with an oval or square carved back and almost all with a round seat and all being given an age at about 1900.  This one seems to have the most intricate carving on the  spindles, stretchers and legs though.  Below are some examples of the other chairs I found. 

Pretty neat right?  I would love to find more designs from the era, but to be honest, I have to say, the carving on the rocker in our shop is still my favorite.

If anyone can tell me anything about the armor that is demonstrated in the carving on the rocker in our shop, I would love to hear about it!  While the helmet looks like Cortez,  the square collar is unlike anything I have been able to find thus far.

Putting a Bed Leg Back Together

This is certainly a useless leg for a headboard! The wood sheered off into multiple pieces where the bedrail should hook in.  It is a classic story of wood beating out metal when put through an endurance test.

To repair this leg, we had to piece together the original broken off wood, along with new wood where it was missing.  Those pieces of new wood had to contoured to match the shape of the original.

We also used epoxy putty filler in a similar color to the wood, as a filler where the missing wood areas were to small to fill in any other way.

Clearly this leg still needs some touchup, to beautify it and make it presentable, but we don't get to do that this time.  Our customer has decided they want to try and tackle that job themselves.  But at least we know we are turning over to them a bed leg that is as strong as it can be!