[Music playing]
Welcome to the third episode of Wood Whisperer video podcast. Today, we are going to cover a topic that could be frustrating, perplexing, dangerous and extremely rewarding all of the same time and that is refinishing. Now, my original intension was to keep these videos in a nice and neat order, starting with milling lumber and moving on to some more complex topics. But my plans were unexpectedly changed recently when the last minute refinishing job came into the shop. Some of you know may know this already, but as soon as your family, friend and neighbor hear that you work with wood that your family get some request from refinishing it is up to you whether or not you want to embarked on that path, but refinishing jobs are great way to make a few bucks, with very little material investment and also, it means to practice your trouble shooting and your finishing skills.
And let me tell you once you refinished your few pieces you have a real appreciation for a very simple it is to finished new wood and that will see refinishing projects also teaches us a lot about wood working in general. We can really observe a great deal wisdom from resolve pieces of furniture. What is that? You want to give me some wisdom? Okay.
[Music playing]
I am pretty sure I am an embarrassment with the entire wood working world. Now inspecting an old piece of furniture like this, gives us a chance to observe how well certain types of jointer hold up to years and years of abuse. I have been wood working long enough to see how my techniques hold up after 30 years but with the 30-year old piece of furniture I can quickly see what jointer really stand a test of time and as a result I am preventing a smart ass guy like myself from pointing and laughing at my failures three years from now. Now as I see it refinishing it may not be the most fun way to spend your time, but motivators like money and knowledge or enough for me to take on just about any refinishing job that comes along. So, put on your respirators and gloves and let us get ready to point and laugh with someone else mistakes, because it is refinishing time.
Although most what I do is custom furniture I occasionally I have the opportunity to work on a refinishing project, such as this antique table. Now what I am going today is take you through the various steps of analyzing this table. Determining what might be wrong with it where we can actually increase the stability and also address issues with the finished deciding what type of finish is actually is and even more importantly sometimes determining if this is a venire or if it is solid wood because the two things we are going to be very different and how we treat them. One of the first things I like to do when I got this piece in the shop is turn it over I want to see what is on the under side usually there is some tell tale sign on how the table was made, what type of material it is, how it was stain and I do evidence of that here, so let us check out some of these details.
The first thing that I notice when I look at the underside of this table is the fact that there is pretty much Mahogany everywhere and that is a really good sign in a lot of cases when the table has a venire on the top. You look at the underside and you will see that it does not look like the same species of wood and that is the tell tale sign that it is a high quality venire on top, but they used the lower quality venire some other species on the bottom of the table. The fact that I see Mahogany here is really a good sign and tells me that we could be a little bit more aggressive with our techniques for removing the finished because we do not have to worry about burning through a venire. I also noticed that the leaf mechanism is stored under the table and I will show you how that works later but essentially the two leaves on the sides pull apart and this middle piece folds out in sort of expense to take up that gap.
Another thing I noticed on the underside of the table is a fact that somebody was a little bit messy with there staining. If you look over on this side here along the edge on the right side, you could just tell that this stain was applied by hand I supposed a manufacture spray process. Another thing I notice looking at the underside are this really nice turn legs here. They key thing that actually concerns me a little bit is a fact that it is not the same wood species that I see on the top. In fact, I think just looking at the grain patterns this is probably pine or some similar soft wood. Now, generally it make sense that they would do this, because they make a giant turn leg like this and this large cross brace to make that out of Mahogany would be prohibited expensive or would just make a very, very high on table and they have to you know sort pump these things out and make them affordable so in order to make the Mahogany look like pine they have throw on a bunch of extra stain and in fact I personally do not like that sort of technique and I like to use the same wood throughout but I understand the reasoning behind in this case but that is going to be one of our challenges as we go through this.
When we refinish it we need to make this legs look s similar to the top and I really do not want to lay on a thick layer of stain to do that, so we will approach that challenge when we get to it. That was our part one of our refinishing series. You surely check on the next video for more helpful tips and techniques. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email us at the woodwhisperer@gamil.com
[Music Playing]
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services