Old table

Al killian

Member
Messages
1,940
Location
Floydada, Tx
I have been asked by the owner of the hotel that I have been doing touch ups to redo a table for hi and his wife. It is a brownish wood and looks kinda like mohogany, but it does not seem to be it. If it helps, the table is from India. Age, well it has flat head screws that have threads that are cut.Here are a few pics to help. The elephants are made of ivory and the tree and other items are different woods inlaid. I think this is a wonderfull peice of furniture.
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Al,

That is a beautiful table. At first glance, it looks like Cocobolo or perhaps Rosewood. Is the table heavy?

Look forward to the end result of your touch-up.
 
Wow. Just, Wow.

I think it would be incredibly satisfying to be the one to bring that table top back to life.
The real trick, I guess, will be to try and determine what kind of finish is on the piece.
 
cool piece!
follow the advice of museum curators and "do no harm"
start by determining the finish.......schellac? if so then lightly scrape or sand off the loose finish, soften the remaining with alcohol and apply a couple new coats.........if it`s lacquer then i`d skip the softening phase and just resquirt after a light scraping/sanding.
 
There was a product "Homer Formby's" that is a blend of solvents that will soften and remove loose finish while not changing the patina (actually patina is qreen from copper Oxidation but we like to use it on wood coloring)

I think I would, like Tod suggested, Find the correct solvent and gentlely rub it off with White Scotchbrites.

I would just clean the finish and not touch the dents and nicks.
 
It has a shellac finish, I plan on going crazy doing this one. The elphants are made from elphant tusk from a elephat her family owned many years ago, or the storyu goes. The fumn is going to be filling the cracks on the ivory.

The wood is close to the color of walnut(meduim brown). So either rosewood or cocobolo. I managed to scrape of a small spot to determine finish type.
 
Bill,
I thought that was verdigris.

Verdigris and Patina are both used to name the reaction of Acidic acid on the copper in copper/brass/& bronze.

Over time the term Patina has leeched over to wood and other materials that are showing age discoloring, so I guess sinse no one is trying to "protect the Verdigis" of wood, you may be right as we butcher the language to suit our personal needs.
 
Bill,
I thought that was verdigris.

Don't get started on the patina thing. I got in the middle of a similar discussion at another forum with some ultra-picky.....uh.....guy. The specific definition of patina is very unlike the common and popular usages I have always been familar with.
BTW, the green gunk is verdigris and it is a patina.
 
Homer Formby made a fortune selling lacquer thinner to the public as "Furniture Refinisher".
Thank God for truth in advertising.

Regards

Jerry
 
I am ready to start this and wondering the best deal for filling the cracks. I plan on useing epoxy and colored to the base color(or as close as I can) they use stain and/or grain pens to mock the grain. I was thinking of system three epoxy and some wood flour should work, but want opoins bfore I try it.
 
Hi

The thing about epoxy is that it's basically forever. That's generally a good thing, but with furniture of high value, you should allow for the possibility that someone else will have to work on it in a few generations.

You might want to think about the shellac sticks in the Lee Valley catalog. I've got no experience with them, but they have the benefit of being reversible if you're not happy with the results. They also have an array of wood tones that might offer an alternative to graining.

Just throwing that out there...

Looks like a really interesting piece to work on. I'm jealous.
 
al,
that`s really a pretty table please don`t use epoxy or pva glue or poly anything on it. you really can make it shine again using "stuff" that`s reversable.
 
OK, wax sticks it is. I just got of the phone with the local Mohawk rep and he is going to add a few to my order. Non of the ones I have are close enough to work. Thanks for talking me out of it.
 
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