Saving the Leg of an Antique Italian Table - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Hi, I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson, Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. This is a nice Italian veneered and marquetry table, possibly late 18th century, maybe early 19th century table. It's got a few things wrong with it. It's got a broken leg. This leg is really bad. I suspect the wood is rotted in there. I've got nails, small nails all around here. I'm just going to have to try to wiggle this loose. Maybe I can expose these nail heads enough to grab them. This joint is such a mess. The leg is broken in all these places. I feel like the best thing to do is to use epoxy. I will epoxy this back into position where it goes and then I'm going to add corner blocks in here along the inside piece and hopefully that will be strong enough to hold it. And that brings up an important subject. When repairing an antique like this, and you'll see when I do the veneer repairs on the tops, I will use hide glue. That was probably what was originally used on this table. But in cases like this where you've got hardly any good wood-to-wood contact and what really needs to be done here is basically what you need is a whole new leg to rebuild these joints. It's best, I think, to use epoxy. And that way you can save all the original parts of the leg. These legs are so bowed and twisted. It seems funny to check the diagonals for squareness but it actually measures up square. That seems really strong. So here we go. The leg is good and strong now. So by using epoxy I was able to save the original leg of this table.