Piece of history restored

Submitted by wafy on

My Great Grandfather was a cabinet maker. He made a number of wooden items for my Grandfather, my Dad and my Dad's siblings. Some of it has lasted the ages in good condition and just have out lasted their usefulness. Others were not so lucky and ended up getting thrown out. Which I am guessing is the nature of inherited items. Things that have a use, get used and taken care of, while other things break and have no use so they are tossed. The number of things that survive the ages slowly dwindle as thing like these do. Which makes it special when they do survive especially when it is family.

I have been lucky enough to have furniture that was built by my Dad, both of his siblings and my Great Grandfather. There was one piece that my Great Grandfather built that had a bit of an accident when I was much younger and ended up in a few pieces. My Dad being a bit sentimental and also a hoarder kept the pieces and hoped to fix it someday. Unfortunately he never got around to fixing it and it sat in my parents basement for a number of years until about 6 years ago when I brought it home with me along with some of my Dad's tools. A few months or so ago I got some inspiration from a British TV series "The Repair Shop" and decided to take a crack at fixing it. The item in question is a cedar chest, which I plan to use to store momentos from my life that I have kept.

For the most part all of the pieces were there. The only thing that was really missing was a piece on the left side of the lid. There were a few chips missing here and there in the lid which meant I would need to rebuild the lid. The rest for the most part was also there with small bits broken, but were there enough to use. After learning it was my Great Grandfathers I wanted to save as much of it as I could. Here is a picture of the state it was in:

A before picture of the chest

So I removed the hardware, the handles and some decorative pieces on the front. I also finished breaking some of the layers of the body so I could put it back together. After I got it to some usable pieces I started to put it back together. To put it back together a bit stronger I decided to use dowels to connect the pieces together as my Great Grandfather didn't use. The boards were simply glued together and the sides were nailed to each other through a rabbited ends on the front and back side of the chest. I left the nails in where I could, and kept most of the hardware. While doweling it together the alignment was not the best. So at least one pair of board didn't align perfectly. On the outside things will be smooth after sanding it, but the inside might be off by less than a quarter of an inch. The lid I didn't exactly match the original wood. The wood I picked out was whiter than the red cedar that it originally was made of. I also didn't plane down the boards to make the original thickness. It still looks ok, but does look a bit off. Here is what it looks like with everything  put together and sanded:

The chest after it was put together and sanded

With everything sanded down and ready to be put together I put a few coats of polyurethane on and put the rest of the hardware on:

The finished chest

Now I have a piece of furniture that both my Great Grandfather built and I helped it to carry on through time.