French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

OK remember this?







Most of the button was destroyed and filled with wood putty, bolts and stuff. So I cut it off and trimmed each half plate at a suitable grain line, leaving as much original wood as possible.

[Matthew Tucker]

(This is a wee bit out of sequence with some of the pics I posted recently - you may if you have keen eyes notice that I did the first part of what comes next, a little while ago)

After quite a bit of hunting around and eventually a friendly donation from Ken McKay I obtained some highly flamed maple close to the original.



Of course, this is brand new wood; it wood (!) have been better to find some old flamed maple but there's precious little of this over here.

I probably should have "aged" the wood first before fitting, but I'm counting on being able to match it under the varnish later.

I think a butt-join isn't enough here; although the hide glue joint is very strong, this place needs some long maple fibres running across the joint, so I plane the end down at an angle to put the maximum new wood in place with the minimum join showing at the plate edge. Most of the NEW wood runs along the centre seam, and feathers out towards the edge of the repair.





I don't need to use such fancy maple for this piece, but the grain will still be running almost the same way.





My new Veritas low angle block plane has been brilliant for this job.







Here's the edge of the off-cut and you can see how good the joint is. I have planed off almost all the way through the plate at the centreline, but angled back up to the edge of the plate so that the join will only be visible on the edge of the button itself, not the plate edge.



Well that's enough for now. I'll trim these more and blend the outside with the french-style button later when the plate is re-jointed and probably re-glued to the block!

[Eric Swanson]

Nice grain matching...thanks for sharing all of this!

[Matthew Tucker]

A damaged corner. The wood was a bit spongy and torn as a result of several top removals/replacements in the past. One way of patching this would be to plane a flat shelf right across the edge and fit a flat piece, then cut and reshape the edge. But the edge was clean, and I wanted to preserve it. So I decided to do a fitted inlay patch. This is more work but will lead to a better result, I think.



Starting the bed. You can see the cracks and splits!



The maple patch piece with alignment marks.




Rough shaping the bottom of the patch. This is going to be more time consuming than fitting a sound post patch; maple is much harder than spruce.



Checking depth and shape of the bed. I make it perfectly smooth and polished and keep the edges as clean as I can.



Chalking the bed



Trimming the patch with a scraper



Checking the fit – a fair way to go yet. The surfaces need to fit perfectly in all dimensions.

[Matthew Tucker]

The finished patch



Ready for gluing.



The glued and trimmed patch – you can see a thin layer of spalting that showed up when I planed it down, but it is of no consequence



I'm happy with the result

[Steve Alcott]

Beautiful work-I'm always impressed when the hidden work is done with as much care as the visible.

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Matthew Tucker

A damaged corner. The wood was a bit spongy and torn as a result of several top removals/replacements in the past. One way of patching this would be to plane a flat shelf right across the edge and fit a flat piece, then cut and reshape the edge. But the edge was clean, and I wanted to preserve it. So I decided to do a fitted inlay patch. This is more work but will lead to a better result, I think.

Matt, to my eye looking at that powdery-like soft wood, the first thing that comes to mind is wood worms, like powder post beetle or something of that nature. How does the corner block look that this was sitting on as far as any similar damage? Also, I don't see that much edge damage at all from previous Back removals as we know the Back is rarely taken off if at all.

[Matthew Tucker]

Very true. the back is rarely removed so perhaps there is another reason. I must have been on autopilot when writing that post! But there is no easily apparent worm or rot damage on the corresponding corner block. And I don't recall being too gung-ho im my removal of the back, either. So, cause uncertain.

[Steve Alcott]

Any progress?

[Matthew Tucker]

Not a huge progress but I think I had better feed you a little more anyway ...

After lot of patience the back is flat enough to deal with.

I don't have a shooting board four feet long so I improvise one on the benchtop. That's a #6 Stanley sliding on a waxed laminex benchtop.



The centre joint is dirty to the core so I have to plane back to clean wood.



its nice putting the halves together like this because I can see how the two pieces are only a sawblade's width apart from the same plank. At least. i think i can see this.



I'll have to chalk fit the centre joint i think. The Stanley is good for getting a nice flat joint and the Veritas low angle bock plane will help me smooth any ripples.