Making a Cloth Hinge

I really enjoy working on all of the various trunks that come into our shop.  Each one is such a unique project that requires creativity and imagination.  I also like the sense of adventure that trunks have.  You know that they came from somewhere.  They went on some interesting journey, they have a story.

They also get pretty beat up while on that interesting journey.  This trunk was brought in to our shop by a young woman who's grandfather used while coming to America many many years ago.  It still has her family name scrawled across the top in yellow, and on a label on it's side.  The most significant 'beat up' area of this trunk was on it's tray. It was covered in cloth and the cloth was beginning to show signs of age.   We were able to repair much of the damage to the tray cloth and I am especially proud of the work we did on the cloth hinge.      The lid for the tray is made of two parts which fold back to reveal the inside.  The cloth fold had ripped so the lid was in two pieces.  Using new cloth and special glue, we made a new 'hinge' on the underside of the lid.  It is designed to lay flat when the lid is closed and then fold when it is open.  When it is closed, the hinge is completely invisible.  You can see the newly functioning lid hinge in the pictures below.

Old Steamer Trunk After Complete Restoration

This old trunk came to us partially dis-assembled by it's good intentioned owner. They had wanted to fix it up themselves, but realized it was way to big of a project for them.  It still had a little bit of the green painted canvas and a few strips of metal left on the box, but other then that, it was in pieces.  They had been able to salvage almost all of the original hardware. The tin strips were rusted so they would need some work, but the cast brass edge and corner pieces were still looking gorgeous. We treated all the tin sheeting that went on the trunk with a rust arrestor. This would keep any rust damage from spreading. All the tin was then painted a shiny black.  All of the wooden slats that decorate the trunk had been marked for us so that we would know where they went once the trunk was re-assembled. This was a big help, and saved us from needing to solve many puzzles. We re-glued any cracks and breaks. Then the slats were stripped, sanded and given a beautiful new water based finish.

We also applied a new canvas cover over the box and painted it a green, very similar to the original green color.  We then put the shiny black tin strips on,  and all the renewed wooden slats.  The brass hardware looks amazing now on this trunk. We don't often get to restore a trunk from it's base, we usually try and make it look as good as possible, without taking the entire thing apart.  We are so please with how this trunk turned out though, that hopefully we will get to do more trunks in such a thorough way!

Re-Canvasing an Old Steamer Trunk

 The work continues on our most recent trunk project.  Once all the repairs were done to the trunk box we moved on to the next step.  Yesterday our Repairman began to re-canvas the box.  It is so exciting for us to be working on a trunk to this extent.  We usually don't get to do the re-canvasing part.

Our Repairman began by using wallpaper glue on the wooden portion instead of on the cloth.  We found that by applying in on the box instead of the cloth it didn't soak through as much, which will be good for when we need to paint it.  Once the glue was smoothed on the wooden portion, the canvas was stapled onto one side,  smoothed across, then stappled on the other side.  Then we smoothed the canvas again before adding more staples.  Once the canvas is securely glued, we can remove the staples and paint the canvas.

To see the last post on this trunk you can look here.....

http://furniturerenewalist.blogspot.com/2011/04/restoring-trunk-from-its-core.html