Restoring a Lap Desk - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. This is a nice little lap desk or a writing box. In other words, it opens up and has a writing surface and then a place for your ink bottle, all your writing implements, and places in here to keep your paper and writing supplies. Most of these writing boxes that I've seen are like late 18th, early 19th century, but we know that this box was made shortly before 1919 by a cabinetmaker named Oscar Hucker. And in the top you'll see these initials E.B. and those were for his then fiancee and future wife, Emma Borstowski. This box now belongs to their grandson and it needs some repair work. The hinges have all come loose. The screws have been torn out. There's veneer repairs and he requested, and I readily agree, that we really not attempt to change the surface of this too much. Now I'll begin as always, you know, taking this apart, noting what's broken, and even while I go along glue down loose bits that I come across. This will need a screw with a larger head. This area here where these hinges attached is the most damaged. Let's start with this one I feel pretty confident that this is rosewood. Let's look through the veneer, see what we got. Here are the three, here's three types of rosewood. I'm pretty sure I've marked these correctly. This piece from the interior gives a pretty good representation. I think this is the same as the outside and this honduran over here's got the lightness and the stripes. I think it'll work. I think I'll just wet this surface a little bit, just with a little bit of water. See if I can see the grain a little bit better. There's a little bit of a stripe there, stripe there. You can see that this side of the box is, well you may not be able to see, is book matched. Not really, a little bit of figure, a little bit of a cathedral pattern going on there. I'm kind of liking this area of the veneer. It's light but it's got a stripe in it. Not bad for a first cut. I think I need to take a little bit off right there. Off camera I cut a new piece and I made this part here a little bit different of an angle. It fits really well. I noticed the old veneer is a little bit thicker than my new stuff so I'm going to use that first piece I cut underneath. This area is so dark but it's right below the bottom of the box I just did. I'll use the same veneer here. Just like before, you can see I'm doubling up the patch. I'm putting a lot of pressure on these little patches because I really want them to be level with the existing surface. Oddly enough, this area didn't need two layers. All right, while I'm waiting, there's a piece of inlay missing on this interior writing surface. This is a box of inlay from my father's shop which really became my oldest brother's shop and it was in business for 80 years. This is what I'm looking for. I found another one here. Well, that is the right size. It's great. This is another interior panel writing surface. Where the hinge is attached to this, it's really messed up. If I glue this back together, then I'll still have to re-drill and plug these screw holes which will be exceedingly difficult to do without damaging it. I think I'll work epoxy putty in there and then clamp it. I don't like... in fact, I never put screws in the putty but I think for this particular application, it's such a lightweight application that it'll work fine. I'm going to sneak a little hide glue under this veneer right here. I'll do the same thing here. I'll get some hide glue down in there and see if I can't get some of this putty down there. Here's a whole corner coming loose. Well, I feel like I've got everything. I'm sure I'll find something else tomorrow. We'll see. I'm going to wipe off the excess glue. There's only a little there with some water. So my new wood is slightly above the old surface. It's funny because of the shadowing, it looks worse than it is. But anyway, that's what I wanted it to be, slightly above. I'll see if I can pare this down level so that I don't have to sand. And now I'll hit this... try just to hit my new wood there with a little bit of 220. And of course, I have to do this edge All right, good. I'll clean off this excess glue and then I've got to cut that keyhole there. And I'll seal this area with a little bit of shellac. I've got to seal this area. This is that inlay I glued in yesterday and it's a little bit proud of the surface. I need to level it off. Now I'll seal that new piece of wood with a little shellac. All right, we're ready to start assembling this. Like all jobs like this, I may find more repairs and loose veneer along the way, but we'll see what happens. This hinge goes here, so I need to take it off, install it on this piece, and then put it back on here. This is one of the hinge areas I glued up, but you can still see where the original holes were. I think I'll mark it out though and re-drill. I almost forgot I'm missing some of these screws. Let me see what I got. Now here I am poking through my miscellaneous screws and I discovered on the shelf I have 3-eighths number twos brass right here. This won't close. It's hitting right here. Both this front board and the back board have have warped slightly inward, decreasing the dimension here. But I have an idea. I'm going to spread this a little bit and just put a piece of wood in there to spread it apart and see how that works. That's not bad. What's odd about this is that there doesn't appear to be any provision made for how you open this. There's nothing to grab onto, and you can see where people have chewed it up trying to get it open with a fingernail like I'm trying right now. So I'm not quite sure what to do about that. If it were mine, I'd add a felt tab from underneath to pull it, but I'll have to talk to the owners about that. This board's helping. It's not glued in. It's just there, so that'll be all right for the time being. Now on to the lower section, and I've still got a patch to trim and glue to get off. Another patch there too. All right, so this piece goes here. This is where we fixed these areas that got ripped out with the epoxy putty. So I think the same thing. I'll put the hinges on here first and then in the box. All right, this has got the hinges on ready to attach, but I realized I forgot I still have a veneer patch to do here. I'll seal that with a little shellac. This is a little springy too, but at least it fits. See, I don't know what it was like before. It was broken off when it came in here. At least, I think it's good enough to close the box. It makes it easier to open that. I'm going to attach the top and see how it works. All right, it closed, but not great, but it's got some problems that I think have no solution. If you remember when I installed this piece was when we really noticed for the first time how warped these pieces are. This box, both end pieces are warped in like this too, and that's what caused the problems here. These corner pieces are hard up against each other there, and I think you can see how this is a sort of an oval shape. In other words, how wide it is there. This is warped. This board is warped too, but don't forget I put a board in here, that board, pushing it apart so that this will close. And I realize now that that's what broke these hinges out, and you can see there's stress marks here now. It's being stressed right now. There's really no solution here. You could put on hinges with a longer leaf and separate these, but if you did that, then the lock would never line up. I think I'm going to have to be happy that it just goes together that far, and it's okay. It's not supposed to be made functional. I'm just going to go over it now. I've got some white spots here I want to get rid of. I've got to put a little bit of color on my patches, and I'll go over it with the feed and wax polish. I don't want to use any solvents to try to get this off. I'm going to see if the polish might help loosen that up a bit. This is just a little perfect brown dye stain. I can see now that this area that I had glued flat where the hinge is, is now bulging out again. These hinges are being ripped out of the sides because of the warping of the sides. I'm going to go over it now with this orange oil and beeswax polish. I'm going to use a piece of steel wool, but sort of it's just an applicator. I'm going to, I'm hoping to nudge some of these white specks loose, but I'm going to go very, very lightly. I'm going to let some of this polish sit on that mark for a little while. There you go. Nice little lap desk, a writing box. It's over 100 years old, built before 1917, and the hinges had come off, all come off. These inner sections come off. All that's repaired. Veneer repairs here, over here in the back where the hinge was. I know some people are going to say, geez, why not refinish it? But this patina represents 100 years of family history and I think it looks pretty good. I hope you liked the video and if you did, please subscribe and and be sure to hit the bell icon so that you'll be notified when I put out a new video.