How Many Pegs Is He Going to Save? - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. This is a 17th century oak side table. It has a single drawer. The knob's not here. It has a plank top, nice turned legs. It's actually in very good condition except that it wiggles like crazy. So very similar to a stool I did a while ago. I'm going to take this apart and re-glue it, make the joints tight. I'm going to try to put everything back exactly the way that I found it. This is interesting. Right off the bat you see that this has been greatly altered or maybe even made into a different piece of furniture than what it was originally. You can see that the top was attached to something else. These are the pegs that you can see the the tops of these pegs in the top of the table over here too. On all four legs there's mortises here and there's a nail. There used to be something else going between these legs here. This one you can see more clearly. The front legs too have a mortise that's been plugged and then the front rail. I don't know if the front rail was cut down or it's just a whole new piece. And this stretcher assembly here though appears to be all original. So I think these legs always were with these stretchers. Just something happened to the top of this. The drawer doesn't look right either. It looks like it's just been cut off because there's a beading on three sides of it and also there's a lot of damage on this corner. A big chunk of wood's replaced and also there's like half dovetails here. That doesn't look right either. I think I'll start by trying to remove the top. Let's see how it's attached. Good. It looks like a peg in there. I hope it's just pegged. Good. This is pegged too. There's a peg there. That must be a nail. Yeah, same on this side. A couple pegs and a nail. Before I go any further, I want to mark those pegs. Yeah, there's quite a few pegs in this top that aren't being used, you know, from its previous use. Yeah, there's a couple big old nails here. In fact, one of those pegs I thought was being used is not being used. That peg's broken. It's these big nails that are making it difficult. Boy, these long nails were a killer. I'm going to leave those right there for now. Maybe my problem is I'm just not using big enough nails in my repair work. On these side rails, there's about five, just in this one, of old pegs that have been cut off. Good grief. Is he really going to mark every peg? Yes, he is. I can imagine some people at home thinking maybe this is a little obsessive or a little bit much, but it's not at all. This is the fastest, most efficient way to get this back together again, get it back together correctly with a minimum of touch-up. There's no glue on these joints. It's just dust and dirt and stuff getting out of the way. This is hide glue. It's been heated up. This joint was loose and just needed an extra piece of veneer here. I can look through the peg holes and see that it's lined up correctly. The other side is the same. I'll do that off camera. These pieces broke off when I was disassembling the table, so I saved them. I finally was able to figure out how they went back together here. Once again, there's no glue on these, but I'm just cleaning off any dirt and stuff. That's an interesting arrangement. Once again, that's more holes than pegs I took out of there. So obviously, these have been nailed in, but I'm just going to put a spot of glue on it, glue it in. Okay, now I need to attach the top. Right off the bat, the first board I picked up I noticed has a crack in it, so I better glue this crack and go over the other boards. Well, okay, I think now I can back out some of these pegs that are in the top and see how this thing lines up. These big nails are a problem. I can't pull it through. I'm going to have to back it out. I may reuse it, and of course, backing it out may cause damage to the top, so I'll just have to be careful. Yeah, it's splintered up. I'll glue it back down. So the piece of tape held all the splinters in place. I'll glue them right back down. That won't need to dry long. In the meantime, I noticed there's some loose bits on this drawer. Here's an old repair, and this whole corner has been replaced. Oh, I just noticed this bead molding's broken and loose too. You can see how this piece was broken off, probably along with that other side. This was what they could save. They replaced that, but you see the break along here, and at the very end of it, for some reason, these are sticking up. Now this piece does not want to stay there. I think I better use some five-minute epoxy for that repair. I'll try to clean it out as best I can. There's a lot of stuff in there. I feel like any type of conventional wood glue isn't going to hold this one. It's just too springy. There's too much force. Alcohol for cleanup. Okay, I think we can get back to the top now. So the first thing I'm doing is putting the boards back where they were, see if it goes back, see if they do go back where they were. I'll start with trying to line up the pegs to where they were, so let's see. Now this center board was neither pegged nor nailed. You can see holes here. There used to be pegs when this piece of furniture was something else. This has holes in it from a previous life. This board also had no pegs or nails. These boards were being held to the top barely, but just by the tongue and groove arrangement here. And once I feel I've got these boards in the best possible position that I can, I will clamp them down and clamp them into place so they don't move. Okay, I think I've got all these boards in the best possible position. I've been jockeying them back and forth this way and that way, and of course maintaining the place where the pegs go too. So constrained by that, but I think I've got it as best as I can. I've got the ends lined up as best as I could, and as I peg and nail this down, I'll keep these cracks even. So what I'm going to do here is I'm putting the pegs back where they came from. There's not that many pegs, and I'll supplement the pegs with some nails just straight down. Some of these boards didn't have pegs or nails, so I'm going to add some nails here and there. I'll be really cautious. You know, I'm going to get all these pegs started. I'm not counting any of them all the way down until I know everything's where I want it. All right, here's the part I don't like. The next step to supplement these pegs, I'm going to use nails. Number one, there are a lot of nail holes already in the top. I'll reuse those nail holes. I do have to add some. Some of these boards were never attached, and of course the theory is that the nails will allow these boards to expand and contract. On these existing nail holes, I'll use, in fact, this is probably the nail I pulled out of there. It's a big nail. I'll use big nails there. Where I have to add a nail, I'll use a much smaller one. Okay, I got everything in place. I think I can set the pegs and set the nails also. Okay, that's everything filled in the top. Let's get it up on the bench, and I'll do the pegs in the base. See, this is where marking those pegs paid off. I have almost no touch-up. I think just a little bit of wax will go on there. I think when I wax this with some brown wax, it'll just fill in those little voids there. That's a big time-saver. All right, now I got to take care of some things on the drawer. That's the cracks that I glued down. I'm going to wax them in. I think I'll use a lighter wax. And the drawer is missing a knob. Let's see what I got here. I'm not sure what it might have looked like originally. We'll find something that looks good here. It's a nice old oak one. I don't know, maybe something smaller. Yeah, I kind of like this. It's oak, so that's nice. It's old, just an old beat-up knob. Give it a little shellac here. All right, I'm going to wax this now. I'm going to use this dark brown re-wax that this piece is just looking a little washed out, and I think the tinted wax will bring it back to life. I'm going to apply it using flourox steel wool. That'll just help smooth it and clean it. I'll put this back down on the top. Well, there you have it. It's a really nice old table, possibly 17th century, and it was really rickety. All I did was re-glue the joints. It wasn't glued originally, but I glued the joints. I put the pegs back and everything without glue and waxed it up. I think it looks pretty good. you