At The Tilt...

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Spring is almost in the air today - glorious sunshine and blue skies have conspired to warm up the studio to a habitable temperature, so I've made a start on repairing the old tilt-top pedestal table pictured. At a guess, I'd say it was late Victorian or early Edwardian, and not of great quality, but its age and patina gives it a charm of its own.

The top was severely wobbly when we rescued it: the animal glue on the spigot that secures the support/pivot had shrunk over time, and the top simply rocked back and forth. Taking the securing rail off the underside of the top revealed damage that had been crudely repaired some considerable time ago, so I've levelled off the heads of the poorly-driven screws that had been used and filled the remaining cracks with epoxy, loaded with dust from the wood itself. I didn't think it worth it to try and remove the screws, as the heads were well-chewed, and they appear to have been driven through and locked by the repairer's glue: it's out of sight, anyway, as that surface faces the table-top underside.

There's further cracking around the base of the pedestal, but it doesn't seem to have much structural import, so I'll take a view as to how far I'll go with that. The table-top has a lovely patina of decades of use, which I'll leave pretty much as is: I'll just give the whole thing a good polish with beeswax: stripping back the surface and re-French-polishing it would be a sin in my book, anyway. I'll keep you posted of progress.


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