Noe, Sarah’s new husband, has some antique furniture that has rattled around the family (and the country) for many decades. In setting up one piece, a corner cupboard, they decided some repairs were needed for it to be suitably presentable.
Being the only woodworker they know, they consulted me on how best to clean it up and repair it.
I examined the piece and determined it was a legit antique, probably from the middle third of the 19th Century. The primary wood is cherry; I couldn’t tell with it set against the wall if there was a secondary wood. It was definitely a vernacular piece: it was competently made by someone who knew the form but was not stylish and fancy.
Close inspection leads me to believe that cabinetmaking wasn’t this person’s “day” job. Given the roughage of 1850 +- 15 years, we’re well into the industrial era of furniture-making, at least in the urban areas. A commercial piece would be made to a higher standard with cleaner and more uniform joinery. It would also likely be somewhat more stylish as well. The form and the choice of cherry would lead me to guess that it originated in Eastern Pennsylvania, not too close to Philadelphia, in the middle of the 19th Century.
As it turns out, that assessment is corroborated by the family story of it heading West on a Conestoga wagon in the later 1800s only to return to the East coast in the early 21st Century, presumably by moving van.
So, we’re talking about a rural maker whose day job was likely farming and did cabinetmaking on the side. Don’t get me wrong; if you are not an amateur furniture historian and you are more than a foot away, you would see a decent antique corner cabinet with a patina appropriate to its supposed age. I rather likely it.
So, the issues at hand. Issue one is a large chunk of the faux frame on the left door was prized off, and it snapped at about 6″ from the bottom. This seems to result from the door dragging on the case floor, and the end of the trim getting snagged but pulled with sufficient force to snap the molding. The break exposes a complex grain, which will lend itself nicely to gluing the piece back on. I recommended Franklin’s Liquid Hide Glue. It’s easy to work with, water/steam soluble for easy cleanup, and easy “oops, try again.” And if a more permanent restoration is attempted in the future, they are fighting PVA or Cyanoacrylate glue bonds.
Issue 2 is the cornice molding and is much more interesting. The front piece had been snagged and broken off on both ends. They had the pieces, but unlike the door repair, which is in an out-of-the-way place since they planned to display the cabinet with the doors open, they were right in your face. Or at least mine. I didn’t see a way to make unobtrusive repairs, so I recommended replacing the whole cornice with a new piece. They said they looked in the local big box store and couldn’t find anything appropriate.
No shit. I told them I could easily make a replacement using precisely the same tools and techniques as the original. So I took one of the broken-off bits home and proceeded to do so. Further supporting the country craftsman theory, the molding is two parallel runs of a No. 6 round plane. One run was about 3/16ths of an inch lower than the first. So with a piece of scrap cherry, I executed the same, and other than lacking 150 years of patina, it’s pretty much indistinguishable. You can’t see once installed down to a bit of tear-out.
