The antique chair restoration project—part 7

The finished paint job is looking good! I may do some more shading after I’ve assembled everything, but I think it will look quite close to the chair back with a coat of wax polish on it (the only real difference now is the level of sheen, because the leather paint has a satin finish).

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The antique chair restoration project—part 3

As I mentioned in my last post, the impression I had when removing the seat was that the leather was extensively affected by rot and too far gone to save. Not so!

Actually, the areas of rot are fairly limited to the parts of the seat which were in direct contact with rusty metal (the blackened areas), and since it seems to have been caused by a local chemical reaction with the tacks and nails, it isn’t really “red rot” as such, at all. That’s a good thing!

Now, the leather is still old and weak and stiff and needs lots of attention, but I think now that I can save the vast majority of it.

The first thing I did was to apply Cellugel (this is a conservation grade leather consolidation treatment that was developed for antique leather book bindings) on both sides to consolidate any rot and stop any further disintegrating and shedding as I am working on it. Anyone who has experienced this type of leather rot knows how messy and horrible the stuff can be! It sheds a fine dust on everything it touches, as well as dispersing the stuff into the air. Not nice! Hence the Cellugel. :-)

I let that dry overnight, and then used a very fine Scotchbrite pad to remove all of the old crusty adhesive from the old patch (the old patch came off fairly easily, thank goodness), and as much of the rotten surface as possible from the areas that were in contact with metal. I suppose that, ideally, it would be a good idea to neutralise whatever it is that’s causing the reaction, but I’m not sure of the chemistry involved, or what would be safe to use, so I just opted for mechanically removing as much as I could. I’ll almost definitely cut away more of the black parts when it comes time to patch the missing areas, but I’m leaving it as-is for the moment.

Then I gave the whole underside a wipe with 99% isopropyl alcohol to clean off the powdery residues.

I next applied a couple of coats of leather binder to the back of the piece to bond the fibres back together and strengthen the whole thing as much as possible.

Next, I’ll apply some mink oil on the top surface, to try to restore a bit of flexibility, and then probably apply the binder to the top surface as well.

This is what it looks like now, from the underside. There are some areas from around the nails and tacks that have completely rotted away, as well as the large cracks in the middle of the seat, and the torn area at the back. My plan is to fully line the whole piece with new leather for strength (including creating a backing for patching the missing areas at the edges), and then use patches and fillers to repair the missing and damaged parts.

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