Another chest restoration

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Hi all,

A colleague at work mentioned that she would like to purchase an early (or earlyish) chest of drawers for a spare room.
I offered her a couple of options that I had available.

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The smaller chest is a circa 1880 red cedar chest. Fairly typical in construction and style.
The taller chest is quite interesting. When I purchased it, I thought from the photos that it was probably Cedar. When I picked it up, I had my doubts. The drawer fronts were a lot heavier and harder than Cedar. After some consultation with some restorer friends, and after discussing the possibility of it being Oak, we came to the conclusion that it may well be Yellow Wood (Long Jack -Flindersia Xanthoxyla).
I believe it's Australian circa 1900.

She decided the she wanted the Yellow Wood chest. Mostly because of the amazing grain and contrast in the drawer fronts.

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Problem areas ...

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Quite a bit of old borer. Only on the cross piece under the bottom drawer, and the back 2" or so of the sides.
I've decided to leave the cross piece in situ, and fill the borer holes. This piece is still very sound. The side sections will need to be cut out and replaced. They have turned to dust. I'll tackle this later.
About 2" of the bottom drawer front has been cut off by the previous owner. I expect that the borer had attacked that as well.

I have no wild-grained Yellow Wood, so I glued on a strip of sapwood Cedar with a similar colour. I also had to cut out the dovetail socket and plow the drawer bottom groove. I blended the grain pattern with some artistic use of a brush and some brown ochre. I didn't want it to draw the eye too much.

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I've now put the bottom drawer together. I built up the drawer runners, and had to apply some strips to the drawer bottoms because of shrinkage. The muntin was a bit smashed so I repaired that as well.

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The two middle drawers sit quite well, and will not need any drawer runner work. The top drawers are OK, but are sitting a bit low. I'll knock them apart and build up the drawer runners.
Most of the work on this chest will be cleaning and re-polishing.

I'll post some more WIP pics when I get some more shed time (unless you tell me to stop ).

Cheers,
Stu

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Here's a few more pics of the process.

Fixing some smashed redwood drawer sides.

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Planing off the new drawer runners.

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All the original drawer locks were full of hornet nests. I washed them out in the sink, and dried them with WD40 and some time in the sun. I have a bag of old keys (mostly English) that, with the help of some needle files, I can usually get to work.
All the locks are now working perfectly.

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One of the drawers had a pithy, crumbly sap line in the back. I spliced in some timber for the lock screw and stabilized it with shellac. This should minimize the dust on the socks and undies

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There a lot of cleaning to do now. Here's one of the top drawer fronts. Beautiful grain once you clean off the old stain, talc filler and polish.

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A few more WIP pics.

Planing some more drawer runners. I leave them over sized and use a scrub plane to hog them off, until I'm ready to sneak up to the required thickness with a jack plane.

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I was a bit worried about how I would remove the wormy sections of the sides. I ended up cutting along a straight edge with a knife and chiseling it out.
There were a few nail points which I cut out with a Dremel.
A shoulder plane cleaned up the edge nicely and a Stanley 90 used as a chisel plane got into the corners.
I glued a Cedar strip into the recess.

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Making some drawer stops and drawer side guides. The drawer stops are now all set.

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After a few days of polishing and a buffing of wax, here's the result.

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I'm a bit reluctant to let this one go
I probably would have found a place for it.
Nice proportions, lovely drawer fronts. Very useful.

Oh well, there'll be others.

Thanks to all who had a look.

Cheers,
Stu

[Sawdust Maker]

Hey

great job

[Justin]

Very interesting WIP and a great outcome, thanks for posting. Mind if I ask how many hours (approximately) went into this one?

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Mind if I ask how many hours (approximately) went into this one?

All up, maybe 20 to 30.

Most of the time spent was cleaning and polishing.

[gyropilot]

Very nice !

[Horsecroft88]

Just caught up with this project of your's Stu. What a stunning grain on the drawer fronts.

I can well imagine how you might have felt in letting this one go. A superb result. The little cedar chest is also crying out for attention now.

Cheers Dave

[mark david]

Nice restoration job.
Have restored couple of chests of similar period myself but nothing with grain as nice as this one.
The grain is very similar to English elm but suspect this is unlikely, woodworms just love it by the way!

It could possibly be Cape Lilac as I have bought and used some of that over here in Perth to make a hall table and it has stunning grain pattern's even more pronounced than in this chest.

I don't know much about Cape lilac timber it may not even have been available or even commercially used when your chest was made.

[Christos]

Bit late to the field to take a look but glad that I did. Very nice piece.

[Xanthorrhoeas]

Lovely work, lovely timber, a great combination. Is one of the carcase timbers Californian Redwood or are my eyes failing me?


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Lovely work, lovely timber, a great combination. Is one of the carcase timbers Californian Redwood or are my eyes failing me?

I'm pretty sure it's Australian (provenance, style etc.).

With some consultation I believe the carcass is Long Jack as well as the drawer fronts.
It normally doesn't have that much figure, the drawer fronts are an exception.