Restoration Tips Compiled by Richard Nice

Never cut towards your thumb always cut towards your chum ! Good advice, cut away from your hands not towards them.

1. Removing Dowels When you have a repair on a chair and there is a broken off dowel in the hole that is loose but won't knock out. Simply screw in a long screw into the end of the dowel and extract it with a pair of pliers.

2. Removing Old Waxes A good cleaner to remove the dirt and wax built up over the years is using half a pint of white spirit and half a pint of vinegar with five tablespoons of linseed oil. Shake the mixture as you use it.

3. Removing Old Finishes from the wood, but leaving the mellowed wood intact, where the finish is marked, scratched, etc. This can be done best with methylated spirits and fine oooo wire wool which will work on 90% of antique furniture, the remaining 10% can be removed with paint stripper.

4. Removing Old Veneer I find a dish cloth or an old towel is the best type of cloth to use to steam the old veneer off, use the cloth wet and apply a hot iron ( I use the old fashioned iron that is heated on a gas ring ) to create the steam, and help it on it's way with a pallet knife between the veneer and groundwork. This is course referring to the old fashioned scotch glue which will re liquefy under heat, it won't work on some modern glues.

5. Repairing Old Veneer When you have to repair a blister it old veneer try heating a block of metal or a plate of aluminum and put a heavy weight on it, so that the heat re liquefies the glue and the weight is there to hold it down until the glue sets. This will only work if there is glue underneath the veneer, if needed cut the veneer along the grain and insert some more glue with a sliver of veneer.

6. Replacing Wood To Match the most important consideration in choosing woods to match the original wood is not the colour ( as this can be changed ) but the grain and the cut of the plank it came from, whether it was crown or quarter cut ( this is more difficult to fake ). So take a careful look at the surrounding wood first, making sure the grain matches the original as closely as possible.

7. Wood To Match The mellowed wood is the top surface of the wood which has been faded by natural light, this faded look is 95% of the patina, the other 5% is the finish e.g. the aged French polish or aged wax polish. So take great care when sanding down new wood ( this term "new wood" might be in fact older wood than the original but it is new to the piece ) flush with the original. A piece of masking tape across the old wood will tell you when you are getting close.

8. Colouring Glue for Cracks in table tops that are too big for wax stopping can be glued up using a drop of the right colour pigment ( slightly darker colour than the table looks better than lighter) to the glue( in this case I would use Cascamite, which is a powder mixed with water in it's natural state would give you a creamy coloured glue line [suitable for ash]). I have used this with great success to hide glue lines than would otherwise stand out like a sore thumb.