Amazing Asian Joinery on an Opium Bed

We have been very excited to be working on a unique piece of furniture here at the shop.  This 'Opium Bed' is being restored to it's previous glory, and it is presenting to us craftsmen some interesting insights into asian woodwork.

 As we have disassembled this piece we have discovered some amazing joinery unlike anything we have seen before.  These intricate joints are so well cut and carefully thought out that they stay together securely without any glue! The joints were hand cut with extreme precision, in various interlocking styles.

 There are also tiny wedges which fitted into some of the joints for extra security.  These wedges were also hand cut to fit exactly.
 This bed has been traced back as far as Hong Kong, but once it was brought to California the different weather conditions caused the wood to shrink slightly. Thus some of the joints have loosened.

 This bed has undergone previous 'repairs' in an attempt to tighten the joints where the wood shrunk, and unfortunately the previous repair job included screws and some amount of glue.  We are hoping to be able to re-repair the bed using only minimal amounts of Hide Glue in spots and eliminate the screws altogether.

When looking at this bed, one of the remarkable things (to us) is how advanced these joints are compared to the European and American Joinery of the same age, which look primitive next to the Asian joinery.  We wonder if the Dovetail joints which began to be used in America in the late 1700's  were based off of Asian woodwork.  I imagine the woodworker from America who first saw this kind of craftsmanship had his eyes opened and his imagination expanded in a big way

From Ugly to Bare to Beautiful!

 This is one set of chairs I am very happy to see stripped.   A refurbishing job just wouldn't be enough to make these chairs look their best because the finish is old and worn.  But in addition, the stain is very dated.  Some stains have a timeless quality to them, well I should say most stains have a timeless quality to them, but we went through a period during the last century where furniture makers were doing 'fancy' things to the stains (think gold flecks, or black 'distressing')  which really gave the furniture an era-recognizable look.  This set of chairs is a good example.


 The good thing is, that old, dated finish is gone!  We just got done stripping it off  and now the beautiful, clean wood is visible again.  Now, I wonder what the owners will choose for the new stain and finish?



Another interesting little project going on at the shop today is this cute little Tilt-Top table.   Here you can see we have stripped it and prepped it for staining.   When we stripped it originally we discovered one of the legs was a replacement. It had been pore-filled with a white medium which, thankfully, is gone now. It turns out whomever replaced it used honduras mahogany, a light colored mahogany instead of an african mahogany like the rest of the table.

Today, the table received this stain in a Cognac color.  I find this stain to be such a nice medium brown with the slightest red tint, that it works well on a large number of projects.  The new leg looks much closer to the old legs, and even though it isn't a perfect match, the customer decided it was close enough for her to be happy with it.  This little table will be getting a Semi-Gloss finish later on this week.

Foam Glue repair VS Epoxy Glue repair

We began working on re-gluing a rocker back onto it's chair today.  The leg had split and was unable to keep the rocker section secure.   When we took the split leg apart to repair it, we discovered that someone had tried to do the job before us.   The hole was filled with a foam glue.  Just a note to all you do-it-yourselfers out the there,  please do not attempt to fix your wood problems with foam glue.  You will just end up giving yourself a headache and bringing it to us to fix in the long run.

We have re-glued this chair leg with a very strong epoxy glue which will pretty much last forever.  The repair can end up almost seamless because the glue is strong without taking up very much space.   There is a small section of wood that is missing, so we will need to fill that.  We can fill it with wood, which will require some very careful fitting, we can fill it with a putty, but that will not end up as strong, or we can fill it with straight epoxy after the rocker is fitted back on.  Any way we choose to go we will then have to color match the fill area.  

We would love to hear about any projects you have going on, or answer questions for you!

Disassembly of a Great Little Desk

This little desk has us a bit stumped as to it's age.   I has some Mission Style elements on the front, which would put it about 1900- 1920, but the knobs are from the 19th century. Perhaps someone found some neat old knobs to replace the original ones?   Regardless of it's age,  it is certainly cute.  Today we disassembled it, so that it can go through the stripping process.  It is going to get a nice new finish later on.  Funny thing about this desk,  when it came to us, it had an old fashioned pencil sharpener screwed into one side.   I am guessing that it must have been used by student at some point.  I think when I was a kid, I would have had quite a bit of fun working at and old desk like this.  But I probably would have spent so much time imagining fantastic tails of older times that I  wouldn't have gotten much school work done.

Historical Stain on Late 19th Century Chairs

Today at the shop our Master Renewalist is working on a set of chairs from the late 19th century.  They have already been worked on by our Repair Craftsman who had to do some serious rebuilding on the armchair.  Now they are being refurbished.  We began this process by giving the set a thorough cleaning job to get all the old grime off.  Unfortunately the finish was so weak that we lost quite a bit of the color along with the grime.  So we are now applying new color with a solvent based stain which is a historical reproduction of what was put on these chairs originally.   Over that, we will apply a modern water based finish coat which will give a good, durable protection to the wood and color.  Once this work is done, the chairs will go to Allied Upholstery for that last step.

More very nice Fabrication work

The last post I put up was about a nice curved chest leg which we fabricated for a lovely chest.  So I thought I would continue that theme with another fabrication job we just completed.   This poor rocking chair was out of commission because it was missing one of it's rockers.   Rockers are tricky because the curve of the rocker on any individual chair tends to be different than the curve on another chair.  If both were missing we could just order a set of new rockers and attach them,  but if we order just one and attach it, then you end up with two different curves.   So we had to fabricate a new rocker from scratch and have it exactly mimic the curve of the old.   Here it has been attached and just needs to be colored to match.

Beautiful Leg Fabrication for a Chest

This leg belongs to a lovely chest, which had lost one of it's own original ones. The chest has delicate mother-of-pearl inlay on the front drawer and very nice veneer work overall. It was a pity that the leg was missing! So we went to work making a duplicate leg, so that the chest would not only be functioning, but visually appealing as well. Here you can se our fabrication in two different stages. The first photo still has pencil marks all over to help guide our craftsman's hands. The second photo is almost completed, it still needs to be attached and colored to match the rest of the chest. I wonder if you would be able to tell me which leg was new, and which leg was old, once those final steps are done?