Turn, Turn, Turn - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorm, Maine. This is a video about raising the height of this beautiful dining table. We need to raise it two and a half inches because the chairs hit the apron. Two and a half inches is a lot but it's because we've removed these casters. They are already removed. These casters don't look good and they just can't take the weight of this table and just serve to damage the floor. So we're going to do away with the casters. Okay first we've got to deal with these cracks. I'll put a clamp on it see if it moves. Well I'm not seeing much movement in these cracks at all so I'm going to make some white oak wedges. Yeah the rest of the cracks in this section aren't wide enough to do with a shim so I'll just use putty. If a crack's big enough I'll glue a wedge in it otherwise putty. So I'm family wooding up all the cracks here but here's one big enough for wood for another wedge. So as you can see I've got putty all over these legs. I've got a lot of sanding to do and while I'm sanding I'm going to think about the little additions we have to make here. In fact I may start by making a drawing and then be playing with it and thinking about it while I'm sanding. So I'm going to take a piece of paper here down to just a board and I'm going to trace the leg and then straighten up that tracing. My image of the leg doesn't have to be exact but it'll give me enough then to be able to draw the proposed feet or extensions I should say. okay I think we have a fair representation of the leg. We need to add two and five eighths inches. I know before I said two and a half but I forgot about the sleeves on the bottom so it's really two and five eighths. So we've got to fill this space here. So how am I going to design these leg extensions? First thing I'm going to do is look up fun feet online. This is Osborne Wood Products. They do a lot of great turnings. You can see all these variety of feet. It's amazing. Really good ideas. Now why don't I buy feet from them? I would in a heartbeat except all these feet are absolutely huge. They're not made for furniture. They're more for kitchen islands and also although they make them in red oak they make them in four different woods although they make them in red oak that wouldn't work for this. But I am really liking this foot right here. This foot these are the elements that I just drew. Damn near the right size. I think I'm going to draw this right here. So I know I want a one-eighth pad on the bottom. I don't know the diameter yet and I want this to be a ring. I want this part to come to rest in a ring. I think I'll randomly make that a quarter of an inch. Make it just a little bit bigger and then I need a well I could go straight into my foot. Maybe that's what I'll do. So I got to decide the the length of this the the actual bun if you want to call it that. Maybe I'll make it like I'll just try one and a half inches for openers and then how how wide should it be. I think I'll make it the same diameter as this main reeded leg and so then I want a little one-eighth cap. I'll make this this two inches wide and and make the same for that little bottom disc I put on there and then I think I can just go with a cove and not not like perfectly centered but oh I see yeah it is centered but it's all right yeah I'm liking this. It definitely goes with the rest of it. It definitely looks like it could belong there so I need to send a I'm going to photograph this and send it to the owners of the table to get their approval. In the meantime, this gives me enough information that I can start gluing up the wood I need to make the turnings. So I need six blocks of wood four inches square about seven or eight inches long actually two of those could be smaller but for the purposes now I'll just keep them all the larger size. If this joint fails it will be for lack of glue. You know I usually turn spindles and such from the square but these are so big I think I'm going to cut them again and make them octagonal. I realized I needed to make one the next size up and that that wasn't really going to work. This is better. So that's the first one. You know it always takes much longer to do the first one. You're sort of figuring out which tool to use for which cut and stuff. By the time I get to the fourth one I'll be able to do it pretty fast. Maybe I'll even make a real-time video of the last one when I know what I'm doing. I'm getting ready to turn the last one and of course these last two are smaller ones for the center legs. So this is the last one. I'm not going to show it in real time because most of the time it's just hogging away excess wood. So I'm all done making the feet. Four big ones, two small ones. Now to install the new feet on the legs. These legs they still have the original sleeves in them for the casters. I've got to get those out. So that's a three-eighths hole. It's pretty standard for these sleeves and I've got to drill it out to five-eighths. Yeah not bad. You know I'm a little concerned that this might move on me under the stress of drilling. You know because of this taper here it's not clamped. Well I can't move it with my hand but I'm going to add some sandpaper to the bottom of this block and I'm going to clamp it when I drill it. There's also stuff on the bottom here that might help to clean that off. That looks like it lines up pretty well. Oh good that looks looks well centered. Do you think they're the same size? Okay that looks good. My biggest concern was that this be centered correctly on the existing turning and yeah it looks great. So now I'm going to do the others off camera. I'm going to do this one and then turn it up see what it looks like in the upright position. I think they look good. So the legs were always darker than the table top even originally. I put a little paint thinner on them and they look great. I don't think they need to be stained and then I think I have a stain for the new turnings too. For the feet I tried some of the same stain that I used on the top and it's not bad at all but it's on the light side. So this is the same oil soluble dye stain I used on the top and this is the standard golden oak I'm applying which is too light. That's fine and then I applied the same type of stain the oil soluble dye stain but this is the walnut. Now let me put some more paint thinner on that. There's just paint thinner but I'm assuming that when I put a coat of varnish on it that's what it's going to look like. So this looks good but I might need to mix up a stronger solution. I'll use eight ounces of paint thinner, two tablespoons of the powdered dye stain so I've got to let this dissolve for an hour. Okay let's try it with the stronger dye stain now. So this is paint thinner on the leg. Presumably this is what it's going to look like when I put the varnish on it and here's the walnut stain. I better keep going with this and do the whole thing but I think that looks good and if it needs to be adjusted in any way I'll do that with color and finish. Okay so I'll let these dry overnight and then tomorrow I can put a coat of clear finish on the legs and the feet. We'll see what they look like and over the next few hours as this dries I'll come back and put even a little more on especially on the feet like this that are a little bit lighter. Okay these have dried overnight and time to put a coat of clear finish on the entire leg and foot. If these feet are too light I'll be very happy. The worst thing would be is if they're too dark. I can darken them up. Okay I'll let these dry till tomorrow. These have dried overnight finish really soaked in but before I put on a second coat of clear the feet some of the feet are still a little bit on the light side so I'm going to mix some clear varnish. I'm going to mix in some of the same stain that I used and then brush that coat on the feet see if I can make them darker. Boy it's a nice color. I think I can put even more stain in but I love the color. I wonder if it's dark enough. I'll try a little bit. It's definitely darker. I'm not really sure if it's dark enough but I think I'm going to go with that. I can always do it again. Yeah I think I'm going to go ahead and use this color. If it's definitely in the right direction then I'll coat these with clear and if it's not dark enough I imagine this is going to need four coats. This is just the second coat so I can add again to the third coat even a fourth coat. You know when matching colors people often think you mix up a particular stain put it on there and it's the right color and that's rarely the case. Typically you build your color in layers just like this. I stained the wood now I've got stain in the finish one or two coats then the clear. The finish itself carries with it a really nice amber color so you're building up the color in layers. Now I need to clear coat the rest of these legs. All right let them dry overnight. Yeah these have dried overnight and they look great. You can feel little nits here and there. I'm going to go over them with a scotch brite pad just to smooth them out a bit and then I'll put on a coat of satin which I'm hoping will be the final coat. Yeah the legs came out really well. So the next step is to assemble the table. So here it is the finished table raised in height. If you remember it had casters they weren't working and it needed to be a little higher anyway so I made these new feet and I think they look pretty good.