'10 Essential Furniture Repairs' Released!


I have long been an advocate for teaching the basics of furniture conservation to woodworkers. Too often conservators hold their hard-earned techniques for repairing antique furniture tight to their chest. Often this secrecy is not due to an elitism but rather a concern that important objects of our cultural heritage are preserved in the hands of experienced individuals. While I sympathize with this desire in theory, I find that, in practice, woodworkers are going to fix old furniture with or without a professional’s help. It seems better to me to teach value assessment, preservation principals, and safe repair techniques. I've been blogging about these things for a number of years now but sometimes you just got to see this stuff in person.

Popular Woodworking has just released a video we shot a few months ago called '10 Essential Furniture Repairs'. In it, I walk through the most common situations I see day in and day out in my studio. I show the most straightforward and no-nonsense solutions I regularly use to restore antique furniture. Here's the stuff I address:

  1. Loose joints
  2. Veneer patching
  3. Severed round tenons
  4. Severed square tenons
  5. Broken spindles and stretchers
  6. Stuck drawers
  7. White-rings in the finish
  8. Sun-faded finishes
  9. Loose screws
  10. Cleaning and inpainting

If you've tackled this kind of thing before, you can appreciate the experience of others. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I do have to say that I am pleased that this information is finally available to a wide audience in a consciously accessible format. If you want to preserve furniture that is special to you, this video might be the best investment you can make. (Sorry that sounds sales-pitchy. I just honestly haven't seen this information around.) Order a copy from Popular Woodworking or watch it now on Shop Woodworking Videos. Let me know your thoughts when you watch it!


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