Seat Repairs 8-25, 8-26/14

Yesterday, we healed (permanently, we hope) the vertical gaps in the seat corners.

Today, the issue is the horizontal gap between the upper and lower seat back panels.

This one is scary, because I have to remove that big, beautiful poplar panel that makes up the upper seat panel.  I have already ascertained that the screws in the vertical "ribs" will move.

The fear is that once released from its restraints, this piece of wood will warp.  You might not think replacement would be such a big deal, but it is a HUGE big deal for someone who is not a skilled wood worker.  There are several different angles cut all the way around that piece of wood.  I have no idea whatever how they were cut.  Plus, finding a poplar plank this wide would definitely require a trip to a specialty wood shop.  There's a real legitimate concern here.

The first step was to remove that precious panel.

I next sanded all the crud and paint off the mating surfaces with 80 grit sandpaper.

To the bottom edge of the upper panel, I applied a strip of packaging tape that wrapped nicely up and over the edge without any wrinkles.

To the lower edge, I applied Abatron Liquid Wood.  While tacky, I laid a generous layer of Abatron WoodEpox putty over the Liquid Wood.

Then, on top of the WoodEpox, I smoothed a strip of freezer paper, plastic side down.

Then, as quickly as possible, I screwed the upper panel back in place. I removed this excess WoodEpox, which had squished out from the edges, and on the outside, I made sure the WoodEpox was pushed well up into the gap.

I left it this way until the WoodEpox began to set up.
Then I had to take the upper panel off again.

I ended up with a nice smooth impression of the upper panel. The putty was still very soft, but I had to get the freezer paper off of it, which turned out to not be the best release agent in the world.  Fortunately the putty was sufficiently cured to let me tussle with it a bit, and a dampening of the paper with rubbing alcohol and extremely careful pulling peeled all of it away nicely.

The clear packaging tape with which I'd wrapped the upper seat panel edge and the vertical ribs, peeled right off of course.

While the putty continued to harden, I covered every exposed surface of the inside of the seat with wood sealer.  I had also applied Abatron to some shrinkage cracks in the lower seat frame (in a mild state of panic about the poplar panel).

As soon as the sealer was dry enough to handle, I reattached the upper panel to the seat once and for all.  This is a terrible picture.  But the end result is that now, there is a gap between the two panels equivalent to the thickenss of a piece of freezer paper and some adhesive tape.  Now, when I paint, I can keep the narrow joint open, so that I won't have a line of ugly, chipped paint.

I came back a few hours later and the WoodEpox had cured to the point that it was carve-able kind of like extremely cold butter.  This allowed me to carefully shave away a great deal of the prodigious excess of putty that I had applied, saving me countless hours of sanding the following day.

And I am happy to say that the patient - the poplar panel - survived the surgery.  It went precisely back into place, but I wouldn't have wanted to trust it overnight!

While we're waiting for today's repairs to cure, here are some pics of another Abatron job on a carriage seat that was truly failing.  Isn't this the weariest looking old relic you ever saw?  It is the front seat of a Swedish "viktoriatrilla".

These repairs are now about three years old, and have never re-opened. There was no support under these seat boards and the seat was collapsing under its own weight.  This crack is in the right front seat board.

The repaired crack.

A piece broken away on the left front board.  Fortunately the chip was preserved.

  The repaired chip, bottom.

The repaired chip, top.

The finished seat.

Steel bracing was created to support the seat and was installed underneath.  It not only completely supports the underside of the seat, but it is actually a structural support which ties the sides of the carriage together!

It's really quite amazing what a goil wit' a tub o' epoxy can do!


8/26 Update

   So here's where we left off yesterday, with the upper seat back screwed into place and the Abatron impression on the lower seat back curing.

And here is the finished repair.  Some reshaping of the lower panel was necessary to make everything blend together nicely.

Close up.

Some repairs to end-grain cracks were sanded back today (you can see some in the front edge), and the mystery of the corner block angles was finally solved after about three attempts.

The blocks are drying a coat of wood sealer and the iron straps are drying some rust treatment.  They will all be installed permanently tomorrow.

That completes major repairs.  Late this evening I re-attached all the ironwork temporarily, both to check position and to just hold everything together while repairs cure.

One last mischief arose, one that I expected.  At the time of the original repair, the left side panel was re-installed a little bit downhill of where it should have been on the slanted edge of the seat frame. Since there was no communication between the iron brace screws and the wood, I suspected that Joe the Carriage Repair Guy hadn't made much of an attempt to mate the wood and the iron brace properly.  This was the case. I re-drilled the seat frame for screws quite a way from their original position.  Thankfully, the railings went back where they belong.  Tomorrow I'll take the railings back off, surface and prime them, then I think I'll let the whole thing sit for awhile, so I can catch up with my real life!