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Right Thefinishedchair frame,coloured,polished and waxed

Buyer beware might be asensible adage to adoptwhen doing a spot of

shopping. However, ‘restorerbeware’ is the phrase which needsto be etched indelibly on a restorer’smind when dealing with the repair ofchairs in general, and upholsteredchairs in particular.

My very first restoration project,when I was training, was anupholstered Victorian nursing chairwhich my cousin had sourced forme in his local antique shop.

When presented with the rathertired looking specimen, I noticedone of the back legs was missing.I handed over the princely sum of£5, thanked my cousin with what Ihoped would appear to be genuineenthusiasm, and thought to myselfthat it would not make much of arestoration project. At least itwouldn’t take too long to finish,and I could then move on tosomething a little worthier of my attention.

ExperienceNothing quite beats a bit ofexperience in life, but at that pointin my career as a furniture restorer,experience was in rather shortsupply – well, non-existent. In theplace of experience, I had an eager,but rather deluded optimism. Ishould, perhaps, have noticed theknowing look in the tutor’s eye whenI showed him my rather patheticfirst project, apologising to him forthe fact that there was so little to doto it, and assuring him that I wouldtry very hard to find much morechallenging pieces in future!

I started working on the chairthat morning, fully expecting tohave it repaired and polished byteatime – I was still working on ittwo weeks later!

The lesson learnt from thatexperience has stuck in my mindever since. Upholstered chairshave the potential to have aseriously detrimental effect onprofit margins. It’s impossible toknow what horrors might be goingon under the cover material andstuffing. As a professional restorerit is very foolish to commit to a firmprice for the restoration of anupholstered chair until the

RestorerbewareA chair to restore proves to be an excellent step on

the learning curve for one of John Lloyd’s students

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upholstery has been removed, andthe chair’s frame has been revealedfor inspection.

One pieceOn that first job, just about the onlything keeping the chair in one piecewas the upholstery. The missingback leg proved to be the least ofmy problems. By the time all theupholstery had been stripped off,the frame was in about 20 pieces.

The chair I am looking at thismonth is of a similar style, but theupholstery has been removed,which helped the estimating

procedure, although there werestill one or two surprises. Theother similarity with that first chairwas that a student, Alan, fromRyecotewood College, who wasdoing a couple of weeks’ workexperience with me, tackled it. Ididn’t give him the job as somesort of bitter and twisted attemptat revenge – I just thought theremight be some useful lessons tobe learnt!

Having successfully dismantledthe frame – see sidepanel – thevarious components wereinspected for damage, and, as is

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1 Oh dear...the chairbefore withthe upholsterystripped

2 & 3 A wormdamaged legand seat rail

4 Brokendowels

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Dismantling ajoint with knifeand hammer...

often the case with beech andwalnut frames, there was plenty ofworm damage. As I mentionedearlier, one of the seat rails wasmissing, but the one that wasn’tmissing might just as well havebeen. Judging by the weight of it,it consisted of more air than wood!

On a more important piece wemight have taken the decision toconsolidate the original rail, but inthis case we decided to replace itusing the original as the pattern forboth sides. Getting the angles ofthe ends of the rails right neededa bit of trial and error and a few

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SymptonsThe main symptoms with this chair were a missingseat rail, a generally loose frame and some brokenjoints to two legs, which had parted company fromhe rest of the frame.With the frame flapping about, the assumptionmight be that it would completely dismantle witha few well-aimed taps with a rubber mallet. Assumptions are rarely good things to make, andthere are always one or two joints that just don’twant to play the game. These joints were initiallyattacked with an old knife. The ones with bonehandles that your granny keeps in a canteen andbrings out for special occasions are better than themodern variety. The blades on these knives haveparallel sides and nice, rounded ends. They havea slight taper across the width and can often besuccessfully encouraged into a joint, between theshoulders, with a few taps from a pin hammer.

The slight taper on the blade has the effect of opening the joint slightly... if you’re lucky. Once the joint is beginning to open, a softwoodwedge can be tapped into the gap, and with theintroduction of some methylated spirits or somehot water to try to break down the old animalglue, the joint may come apart. If it doesn’t,drastic measures could be required. I am alwaysrather reluctant to cut through joints with a saw,but sometimes this approach is the only one thatwill keep a job moving forward in a commerciallyviable way, particularly with dowels. Doweledjoints are notoriously bad at coming apart, andeven if they do, the dowels will often be damagedand need replacing anyway. Therefore resortingto the saw treatment is not really such a bad option.Damage to the two shoulders can be kept to aminimum by using a Japanese saw because theblades are so thin and don’t have too much set.

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82 F U R N I T U R E & C A B I N E T M A K I N G

through the relevant circular holein the dowel plate. Havingreplaced all the missing anddamaged bits, we glued up thelegs and seat rails.

Good planHaving glued up the frame it’s agood plan to ensure the legsstand flat on the floor, adjustingthe frame into the right shape withtwo wooden battens and a big Gcramp. To actually cramp up theframe we used a big lorry strap,but it was interesting to see thatthe original Victorian maker, whoobviously didn’t know any lorrydrivers, had cut ‘V’ grooves eitherside of the legs to allow a crampto apply pressure across thejoints. Gluing the back onto theseat frame again revealed somelittle cutouts to allow cramping ofthe sloping back to the seat rail,

which we utilised this time. To gluethe cresting rail to the back weattached some G cramps eitherside of the joint, and then woundstrips of old inner tube aroundeach pair of cramps to applypressure across the joint. This is a surprisingly precise andeffective way of cramping thissort of problem.

Having glued all the bitstogether, any visible new bits ofwood were coloured and all thepolished surfaces of the rathergrubby frame were stripped,coloured as necessary to make allthe bits blend together, and polishedwith shellac. The unpolishedsurfaces of the frame were treatedfor woodworm and obviouswormholes on the front legs werefilled with hard wax. A final waxpolish and the frame looked reallysmart. An excellent job Alan! F&C

StudentsTalking of glue has reminded me to mention the importance ofinviting students to visit your workshop on a regular basis. Thebetter well off, older students, who have taken early retirement,aren’t quite so useful – it’s the hungry students that are running ona tight budget that are the best value!

When I was training, there were all sorts of money savingschemes being invented by the more impoverished students. Themost bizarre and desperate being Phil, who tried to make the furfrom a dead badger he had found in the woods into a badgersoftening brush. One of Alan’s contributions took the form of athermostatically controlled glue heater. Nothing very clever aboutthat, I hear you say. But if the glue heater is actually a cheap,second hand baby food heater which takes up little space, heatswater and has room for a jar of animal glue, a brush and a syringe,it has got an awful lot going for it!

tweaks on the disc sander. To drillthe dowel holes, we just temporarilysecured each end of the rail againstits respective leg using the vice anda cramp and drilled through theleg’s dowel holes, which ensuredthe angles and positions of the railholes were correct.

One of the walnut front legswas suffering very badly fromworm, especially around the dowelholes, so because of its ratherimportant structural role wedecided to splice a new piece ofwalnut on the back face. Puttingthe splice on the back is not reallya difficult choice to make, if thenew bit of wood is round the backit’s much more difficult to see! Itstill needs to be coloured in toblend, mind you. Colouringchallenges aside, it’s important totry to keep as much of the originalvisible surfaces as possible.Creating a successful splice justneeds as long a splice as ispracticable, a very sharp, well setup plane, to create a pair ofperfect gluing surfaces, G cramps,a sash cramp and some glue.The G cramps get the two gluingsurfaces nice and intimate, butbecause of the angle of the spliceand the slippery nature of glue, thesash cramp is needed to stop thetwo pieces sliding apart.

Replacing damaged dowelsneeds a dowel plate and somebeech which can be trimmed toroughly the right square cross-section on the band saw. Thesquare dowel is transformed into around one by hammering it

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6 ... andusing asoftwoodwedge andhammer

7 Cuttingthrough thedowels withJapanese saw

8 Drilling outthe dowels

9 Splicing totop of front leg

10 Splicedrepair incramps

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11 Gluewarmer –Alan’s jamjar with glue,syringes andbrush

12 Springclamps gluingmoulding tofront rail

13 Drillingdowel holesinto new railusing originalleg holes asa guide

14 Trimmingspliced legrepair withblock plane

15 Makingbeech dowelswith dowelpop

16 ‘X’ battensto level seatframe

17 Crampingcut-outs onoriginal rail,used whenbandcrampsnot available

18 Crampingcresting rail– ‘G’ cramps/inner tube

19 Crampingback to seatrails usingcrampingcutouts inback

20 Cleaninga leg

21 Fillingworm holeswith hard wax

22 Alan getscolouring