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Don’t think I can save this one

Rennie Heuer

Rennie Heuer

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This turned lid was handed to Jan by a friend who thought I might be able to do something to disguise the repairs that were made after it had been dropped. Like all such things it has some sentimental value.

The repair was a poor one. The edges do not match up well leaving ridges at the joints. Glue was not cleaned up well, especially on the inside.

My first response is that I can clean up the inside, sand everything flush, and put a coat of shellac sealer on it... but who’s going to see the inside?

I don’t think anything can be done with the outside. Any sanding will remove the finish and it would be impossible, at least for me, to match it. Furthermore, the decorative painting is so light that it would disappear if you just thought about using any abrasive. Especially where the painting spans the breaks.

I promised I would bring this before the collective before dismissing it and sending it back to its owner with an “I’m sorry”.

What say you?
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Too bad they didn't bring it to you before they tried their repairs. They did more damage than good...

Looks like the repairs were done with excessive Super Glue and accelerator. Carefully scraping the inside could be done, but almost any thing you'd do to the outside would run it.

Acetone might dissolve the super glue. Maybe try a few drops on the bottom of the outside, to see if it also would damage the old finish. (It probably will.)

Perhaps Dave H. will chime in here to tell us how he'd do it.
 
Tough one, you'd have to get the old glue off. From eyeballing it I think that's probably Gorilla or some other foaming Polyurethane glue). Which leaves the $64,000 question of what the outside finish is.

If you're really lucky the outside finish shellac or less happy but still plausible lacquer in which case a very slow soak of 3m "Safest Stripper" will, I believe release the glue but not generally affect the finish - its super slow though and might take a week or even two to penetrate the glue bond (tinfoil to keep it from evaporating to fast). The stripper will attack lacquer but it's really slow at it so you might have luck in that case with attacking it from the inside.

Acetone will also attack gorilla glue but whether that will affect the finish is also a large bucket of who knows.

I'd test the outside with alcohol (shellac) and lacquer thinner (yeah lacquer) to see if its one of those and maybe acetone if there's an inconspicuous spot (?not sure what acetone doesn't attack heh but.. maybe?) then go from there.

Safest Stripper trick stolen from Don Williams.
http://donsbarn.com/using-safest-stripper-in-furniture-conservation-i/
http://donsbarn.com/weeds/

Getting it back together afterwards is another ball of wax :eek: :eek: Calling Mr Hawksford?

[Edit] yeah hadn't considered superglue until I saw Jim's response.. possible. back to the acetone?
 
I'd be curious to what Mr. Hawksford's advice would be. But wondering if the glue joint could be steamed to pull it back apart, cleaned up, and reglued properly. Of course all of this depends on what they are willing to pay or how good of friend they are. ;)
 
Short of a Dave Hawksford level of restoration and painting repair, I don't think any fix is going to look better than the bowl already looks. :dunno:

Dan Noren said:
clean up the inside, using a v bit, cut a groove on the inside and outside, and do a fill with ground turquoise, smooth down, and give the whole thing a finish coat.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's because I live in an area that's home to literally tons of turquoise jewelry and other artwork, the "cracks filled with ground turquoise" look is totally played out IMO. I think it would look especially bad on a piece that already has a painted design on on it. Again, IMO. ;)
 
Is there enough sentiment the owner would be willing to live with copper wire stitches or sutures as seen on some of these bowls? You would have to get rid of the glue overflow and do some drilling, but it's one solution.
 
Looks to me like it was broken more than once. Looks like 2 types of adhesive. Gorilla Glue and 2 part epoxy.

Unless there is some magic out there, I can only see sanding completely inside and out.

Problem is - the top will not look like the bottom. The aging patina of the wood will also be gone.

Then - the cracks will still be there.
 
I've determined that the finish is likely shellac as a small test area on the rim almost immediately dissolved and dulled when wiped with alcohol.
 
Well acetone definitely attacks shellac so that's out.

So there's two things I know of you could try, first is the 3m product - 3M Safest Stripper. It's really close to completely non-reactive with shellac and if you come from the inside I think it's plausible that it'll come apart nicely. Although that depends a bit on the exact glue as well so YMMV and I'd spot test from the inside to see if it worked on some of the blobs before committing to far.

Second is you could also try Methyl acetate which breaks down a lot of the modern glue compounds but doesn't attack shellac .. much... A lot of the Methyl acetate based glue removers also have a handful of other things added (DMSO, etc..) that will attack shellac so this might be tricky to get to work well.

Still leaving open the question on how to get the darn thing back together :D I'm kind of leaning towards hot hide glue (or just gelatin.. super clear and strong) because of the high tack so you could actually just hold the pieces in place while they got the initial set (plus any squeeze out wipes off with water - and there's no "creep" so they'll stay in alignment). The downside to that is that it will come back apart if it gets wet or really high humidity.
 
Sorry Rennie been hunting the last couple days in Va.
It's doable but will require a refinishing. You'll lose the bleached out look and you'll never totally eliminate the break lines. With the botched glue up it's not something l would take on if they want a perfect job.
 
Dave Hawksford said:
Sorry Rennie been hunting the last couple days in Va.
It's doable but will require a refinishing. You'll lose the bleached out look and you'll never totally eliminate the break lines. With the botched glue up it's not something l would take on if they want a perfect job.
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Been giving this a lot of thought and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to send it back and tell them its way above my pay grade.
 
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