It's been a while since I've written a post on here, the last few have been cross posted from my Youtube channel, so I thought I'd do things the other way round maybe.
I have over the years repaired many things, and this sewing box that I recently acquired was in need of some attention.
Sewing box (cat for scale) -
The box was made around 1930 / 1940 and it's made from Oak, and has it's original Bakelite casters, a nice thing, it was lined with a silk like material, however over the years it had become badly stained and I think maybe moths had been at it as well, the wood work also needed some tlc, nothing drastic just joints re-gluing and the finish was very patchy.
So as with most jobs like this it has to get worse before it gets better, time to take stuff apart, which wasn't that hard seeing as time had done some of the work already.
Pile of bits -
You can see the green material, which was glued to very old board, what was also interesting is that whoever made the box had used 2 bits of board to fix the legs to the box part, which meant I needed to find a way of fixing the 2 bits back together, but first sanding the old finish off and removing the years old glue that seemed to be everywhere.
Right most of the sanding done, time to start putting things back together, a good idea when doing something like this is to use a tub with a lid for any screws and other fixings you take off, that way they don't get lost.
First the top section which makes up the box needed to be glued back together -
I had to do this in stages, but it worked well in the end and once that was done it was on to fixing the box section back onto the legs, to replace the board I removed I cut thin strips of oak salvaged from an old table (made around the same time as it happens) and used these to glue and pin the 2 sections together, I used a load of clamps to make sure there was good contact between the 2 sections.
Many clamps -
I also used strips of wood as wedges to push the strips of oak into the top section, this was also necessary as the top had a bow in 2 sides which is now gone.
In the image the black lines indicate the new strips of oak that fix the 2 parts together, the bits with red marks we just wedges.
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I did also need to cut a new pieces of wood for the base of the main box, the drawer and the 2 smaller top boxes as these had been lined with the green silk and none were salvageable, another good tip if you do anything like this is to try and remove the parts in one piece as this will give you templates for any new parts you might need to make, just makes life easier.
Once I had it all glued and pinned back together it was just more sanding to remove access glue and then the wood needed to be stained (I used a light oak stain) mainly because the sanding process removed some of the colour, and after the stain had dried I applied a dark oak wax and buffed it to a nice shine, and then I've applied a further clear wax to help maintain the finish.
And here it is, all done and ready for many more years of service, very pleased with the end result.
