Restoration Advice

[Yorkie]

My chum David (Yorkie) has just completed his first veneering job; this being on a lovely wooden box he made from scratch. David exercised patience throughout; he made the box with perfect comb jointed corners; veneered it in oak and finished it and it didn't take him long as David kindly kept me up to date with work in progress and pictures via email. Nice one David;another success story.

Thanks Colin!

Although it's not a radio cabinet so not directly relevant to this thread, the techniques used to venner and finish the box are just the same I guess, particularly if it was desired to re-veneer a flat surfaced radio cabinet. My son asked if I'd make him a box to store a boxed set of CDs to match his oak furniture. The box is about 12" long 9" high and 9" deep, and he asked if I'd line it with brown felt.

I made it from 12mm thick ply, and veneered it with rift oak veneer bought cheaply off e-bay, which I fixed with hide glue. Oak isn't the easiest of veneers to use as it's so open grained. However, after I'd stained it dark oak, and given it several coats of shellac sanding sealer and sanded it with 1200 grit wet and dry, then applied pastwax it buffed up to an accpetable finish.

Rather than try to apply felt directly to the inside of the box I stuck it to panels of stiff card then fixed the panels inside the cabinet. I made the box as one piece, then sawed off the top and cleaned up the cut edges before I applied the veneer, then applied lipping to the inside of the lid so that it would fit on snugly, then I applied the veneer.

Incidentally, if wire wool comes into contact with oak and gets wet, it will react with the tanin and stain the veneer black. If woodturners want to 'ebonise' oak, the put some wire wool in a jar of vinegar and leave it overnight. When applied to oak, it will make it look like ebony when it reacts with the tanin. You can buy ebonising liquid, but why bother when for a fraction of the price you can achieve the same results.

The trick is of course, not to accidentally turn oak black when you don't want to, so keep wire wool well away from it!

I've attached a few pics, which I hope may be of interest.