PART 2! Restoring an ANTIQUE Desk – Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration, in Gorham, Maine. Our last video ended on a cliffhanger. I'm restoring an old spinet dust that had been badly damaged by water. I'm treating it with denatured alcohol and oxalic acid. Where we left off, I had just applied the first coat of varnish, which was trying to fisheye. In other words, contaminants were trying to affect the varnish. Let's pick up on the action now that first coat has dried. I'm anxious to see how those touch-ups look also. Wow, everything seems nice and dry. This is great. This piece doesn't look dry yet. I'll stick it in a warm spot. But this is all dry enough. I'm going to sand everything with 320 pre-cut paper and put another coat on. You can tell, by the way, that the sandpaper gums up a little bit. It's not as dry as it felt to the touch, but that's okay. I'm just going over it quickly. The next coat should dry a lot better and sand better. After I sand just a little bit, I also go over it with a gray pad. Once again, just quickly take the little nibs and stuff off. On objects like these legs, I just use a gray pad. The sandpaper would have a tendency to cut through all those edges I touched up. The lid and the false drawer front don't get sanded because I've got to coat the other side here. These are double-sided pieces. The legs always had more finish on them than the carcass. So I'm going to go straight to the satin. It's the same finish, the Waterlox Tung Oil Varnish, but the satin version. Before the final coat, I like to wipe these things off with this Mohawk Wax Wash Remover. Besides removing the, obviously, surface dust, it helps remove contaminants and just seems to prepare the surface for a really nice final coat. Great. Everything's dried fine. It's not ready for the final coat. I'm going to put another coat on these two pieces especially. They need more finish on both sides. The legs look great. I'm calling these done. These lids are what had the most damage on them, so they got cleaned down the most and they're really soaking up the finish. They're going to need at least four coats. One of the nice things about the Waterlox Tung Oil Varnish is that it doesn't require sanding between coats. So the first coats on these objects soaked in so much and they're not rough or anything. I'm just going to apply another coat. In fact, I'm going to give another coat to everything and I'll sand before the final coat. With each coat, this being the third, the wood just keeps looking better and better. The depth is really nice. These drawers, like the legs, had finish on them. I've given them one coat. I think I can go to the final coat now. Just a quick once-over with the Scotch-Brite pad. A quick wipe-off with the wash-wax remover. Okay, that was quick today, so let them dry overnight. Wow, well, the case here has dried fine. Now, two days have gone by. I didn't work on this yesterday. These parts of the lid are still tacky. It's been very humid lately. I'm going away for a week. I'm going up to camp and what I'm going to do is flip these over on points and put a coat on the other side and let them dry for a week. The drawers are fine, so I can put these with the legs. One of the things I like about the Waterlox is its slow drying time because it allows it to really flow out beautifully. But when you're refinishing with it, you can run into these drying problems. And the best thing to do, I can turn up the heat. I'm going to let these dry for a week. I'm going to flip them over and do the other side. And once they do dry, subsequent coats have much less of a problem. The flip sides, which I coated maybe three days ago, they've dried up just fine. But I don't need to sand them. I'm just going to put another coat on them. Because I know there are drying issues, I'm going to try to put on as thin a coat as possible. Alright, these are going to have plenty of time to dry. So these have had over a week to dry. The body of the desk is fine. These lids still have some areas that haven't dried completely. I don't think it's going to be a problem. I'm going to coat them anyway. And I'll show you what I'm going to do, though. These areas that are still glossy are a little bit tacky. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pad these areas just slightly with a little bit of paint thinner. Okay, I'm going to let this flash off while that's going on. I'm going to sand and get the case ready for a final coat. Now the case has dried really well. I'm going to go over it with some 320 gold sandpaper, just kind of lightly, and then go at it a little more aggressively with a gray Scotch-Brite pad. I'm getting a little buildup on the paper, but it's dry. Comes right off. So I'm going to put a coat of satin on the case. I'm hoping this is the final coat. And on these two lids, though, I'll go back to the sealer finish. They're not ready for the satin yet at all. All right. I realize I don't need to turn on the heat tonight I'm going to turn on a dehumidifier and we'll see tomorrow how it goes. Wow the desk carcass here has dried beautifully. The coat went down a lot better on these but they're they're still tacky. I'd been thinking about what I would do if they were still tacky and I'm going to clean out the shelf under my bench, set them up on that shelf and point a heater under there. Yeah I mean I'm not going to enclose this or anything but it's nice and warm in here because good airflow is just as important to the drying process. So we'll do this the set until later today and see how it's going. Wow these are they've really dried up well. There's a little just a little bit of tackiness I feel here, slight so. I didn't run the heater all night I turned it off at the end of the day but I did run the dehumidifier all night. I'm just going to let these sit for another day. It's much drier now and I've got another part I can work on. This is the writing surface of the desk you know the part that pulls out. It had a lot more finish on it than any of the other parts but I sanded it, you may remember previously, and gave it one coat of sealer. I'm going to sand it again and go ahead and put what I hope is the final coat on it. Wow good news they feel completely dry. This is really good news. Of course remember it's been less than 48 hours since I put that coat down so it was a little worrisome but it's good. I'm still going to let this dry further because I can today flip it over on points and get a coat on the other side. This coat on the writing surface went down went down really well. I can set has had quite a few days I'm a little bit unsure how long to dry but it's nice and dry and it's not clogging up the sandpaper at all. It's nice and powdery. I like that. So the thing is you got to let this stuff dry. I feel like this could be the final coat on this side so I'm going to go with the satin. Now we'll just let these dry. Today's a great day. Low humidity, low dew points. Tomorrow and Saturday they predicting temperatures up in very high humidity. It does happen here in Maine. It's unusual but we'll just see what happens. Time is on our side. Alright these have dried overnight. They dried great. I kept the dehumidifier on but they do need another coat. Same elevated these on the points to get better airflow under the bottoms. I still want these the bottom of these pieces to continue to dry. So I've had a couple days for this to dry. Ended up only having one day of high humidity. So these surfaces are ready to rub out and now I can get back to this side. you Okay I've let these dry for two days and they have dried completely. Bone dry. I'm so glad about that. So they're still starved for finish. I'm going to go the next coat I'm going to put satin on because it might be the last coat. So I'm going to do just what I did before. 320 gold, gray scotch-brite pad and then a coat of varnish. Wow it's just been overnight but these have dried really well. They're great. I'm going to give these another day before I rub them out but I can start on the desk body now. Before the rub out I'm going to go over the tops kind of quickly with 500 gold paper and then dry 4-0 steel wool and then I'll use steel wool and the orange oil beeswax polish. You can see what it looks like after that quick sanding. It's it's uneven. There's shiny spots, the low spots and so with the steel wool you keep going until those shiny spots disappear and then the finish takes on a really nice glow. Using a block with the steel wool can really help with the edges. Alright it's all nice and even now it looks good. I'm going to go over it with another piece of Quaralt steel wool and the orange oil beeswax polish and I'll go over the sides of the cabinet and everything just with the steel wool and polish. I don't need to do the sanding and and dry routine. Now for the sides and all else besides the top I'll just use the steel wool and the polish. I think I'll attach the legs and then do those with the steel wool and polish. These legs are really fun. You know you've got a bolt here coming out of the leg. Now I've got a flat washer, a lock washer that I'm adding and the nut. I've got to reach in there. You can't see what you're doing. You got to reach in there and put each piece on. Anybody who's worked on automobiles knows exactly what this is like. Not too bad. So there you have it. A beautiful spinet desk from the early 20th century. It had a lot of really bad water damage in this area here. So much so that I thought it was necessary to strip the old finish which wasn't much and I don't think it was the original finish and put on a much more durable varnish finish that's appropriate to the age of this piece. It's important because this desk is in daily use by a student and this desk belonged to her great grandmother. I think it looks pretty good. I've got about 20 hours in this job and these are the tools and materials I used.