Restoring a Rococo Revival Table - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Here we have a nice, really nice Victorian center table. It's got this beautiful base and has a large burl top. It's probably from about 1840 to 1860, a Rococo revival style. And the problem here is structural and it needs re-gluing. A lot of these, all the legs and supports are all curved. This leg, this support has broken. All the supports are loose, like this one. And also the legs themselves are coming away from the center here. The problem with any table like this is the design, the weight of the table, the weight of the top itself and the weight of anything that anyone puts on that top is just, by definition, pushing this thing apart and spreading these legs out away from the joints. So I'm going to take it apart, glue it back together, and I'm going to decide if and what I may do to strengthen these leg joints to keep them from coming apart again. There's a piece of wood screwed to the bottom here. I want to take that off and see what we got going on here. Oh, interesting. Even with these huge metal straps in here, these legs are still moving. I'm going to mark these legs and take these off and see what we've got. It's got a pretty nasty crack in it. It's going to be interesting to figure out how I'm going to glue that up. And it also has some sort of old repair going in here. Maybe there's a dowel going through there already. There is. There's a dowel there that must be run all the way down through this crack and also two dowels there. That ellipse is a dowel at an extreme angle that's been cut off. And I can see down in there some of those dowels. Okay, great. So I'm taking these screws out of these big metal bars that hold these legs on. But I'm going to plug these screw holes before I glue these back on. I don't understand why these can be screwed in as solidly as they are, and yet there's still a space here. So when I glue these, I want to pull these back. I hope so that there's no space, which would mean that these screw holes won't line up with these metal bars. And so I'm going to plug them, re-glue these, and then re-drill for these screws and put them back. Now I want to glue this cracked dolphin support here. I can't get this apart. It's been repaired in the past. I'm going to have to work glue in there. I think I'm going to work epoxy into that crack and clamp it back up. Okay, so now I'm going to plug all these screw holes, and then I'm going to extend these mortises for those metal bars. I'm anticipating when I re-glue these legs, I'm going to bring those bars back a little bit past the existing screw holes. Okay, I've got the screw holes plugged. I've chiseled back these slots for that metal bar, and now I can start to glue these legs on. I've been able to pull that leg in where it's supposed to go. There's no gap there. And sure enough, I'm glad I plugged those screw holes because this metal plate is slightly back from where it was. Maybe just a sixteenth of an inch, but when I drill it, this leg should be able to stay where it is. Came up nice and tight. Before I take this clamp off, I think I'll put these screws in the metal bar. And this is a driver that can drive slotted screws. All right, now I can glue on these supports. Okay, so now I've got everything glued up. I've got some touch-ups to do on this support that was split. I've got to reinstall the pediment here that screws from underneath. There's a wooden plate that goes on there. And then I've got to install the top. Looks pretty good.