Bow Back Chair Sitrep...

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Finally, this afternoon, I completed the discombobulation of the Bow Back Chair - henceforth to be known as the BBC - into more or less its component parts. Pictured above are three of the seat-frame parts, and as you can see on the two to the left of the photo, aside from the larger holes for the old cane seat, the wood is pretty much peppered with the myriad holes left from removing the hundreds of tin-tacks that had been used in successive re-upholstering of the chair.

To be frank, when I first uncovered the sorry-looking woodwork underneath the layers of old cloth, horsehair and hessian, I was pretty horrified at the state of the timber beneath, and even considered the possible avenue of making new seat parts from scratch. But, the price of hardwood, my rather hobbyist-sized bandsaw and limited personal skill set made me consider a rather more mundane solution: filler, sanding and waxing.

The test piece I used was the rear of the seat-frame, shown on the right: it might still look pretty knackered, but it was as peppered with small holes as the other two pieces before I started - like the worst case of woodworm you can imagine - however, I think that the technique will work well enough and save me a lot of hassle in getting the BBC back into shape: it also re-opens the possibility of re-caning the seat as it was when it was first made, a hundred or so years ago. Keep you posted!
 

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