Brass foot prior to gilding.
Tom spent many hours finishing these brass feet- there are 12 in total and each foot is composed of 4 components. To maintain the crispness all the finishing / sanding was done by hand. The photograph shows the foot offered up to the macassar leg- getting the macassar and brass absolutely flush is part of the challenge.
Peter polishing the underneath of the tables
The macassar ebony and satinwood of the undersides of this pair of tables is coming up rather beautifully. The blue is protective foam over water gilding.
Peter will need another couple of weeks and then we will leave them to harden off before waxing.
Tom has just completed a display table in oak with a leather lined drawer.
Next for Tom is a display case for a Grouse!
Jenny has been getting to the bottom of the various paints available for conservation work and then mixing up colours and glazes to blend in the new areas of carving on the Chatsworth bookcases.
Oil based paints are now very hard to get and we are using Lime wash and various “dead flat” oil substitutes.
Jenny painting a new section of plinth.
Wynn is currently doing long lengths of secret mitre dovetails.
This is to produce an expanding oak table which is constructed as a hollow box to conceal a stainless steel expanding mechanism.
Wynn at work
The legs also are made as mitred boxes and mitre into the table top to give continuous grain match up the leg, along the top of the table and down its opposing leg.
The result of this should be a very simple looking table!
We have two lots of carving going on at the moment.
On the design and make side Tom has 12 leg capitals to carve for a pair of Hall Tables. They are in Lime and will be water gilded.
Tom doing the final sanding on the reeds of the leg capital
Each block has 4 sides with 10 reeds on each side so there are a lot of reeds to carve. We have drawn them out and had them CNC’ed but in this case we are doing final carving and detail by hand.
On the restoration side Alan is carving mouldings for a range of bookcases from The Chatsworth Sale.
We are using douglas fir as the best match to the original timber and it is quite awkward to carve but should get easier as Alan builds up a rhythm.
Pleased to have a new site up and running so thank you fusion for you help, ideas and getting it done.
