ArcticArtique

Hi everybody! Check these out. A couple of vintage wood projects we just finished up. We found this old apothecary chest on our local swap meet site. It was pretty well beat up when I brought it home. It had seen much better days, but with a little elbow grease and a couple of repairs here and there, this turned into a very nice piece.

I have no idea how old it is but would guess it to be from well before the 50's. Someone made it back in the day using rough hickory for the drawers. All pieces look to have been hand cut and glued together with all of the drawers numbered for positioning. I gave it a thorough sanding and scraping as it looked to have been painted and unpainted several times.

We were fortunate to have an entire bag of matching knobs that matched the chest perfectly. Yep, they were more from the thrown away box we found a couple of years ago. That box of trash has really come in handy the last couple of years. This project was pretty well straight forward...clean it up, give it a new rich color and move on to the next project.

Speaking of the next project, check out this old library magazine table. It was fairly well busted up when Kitty had me drag it out of a dumpster but we both saw the potential in it. Well, she did more than me back then. We had it around and on the back burner for a year or so until it was time to go to work on it.

I had to remove one of the bottom boards that had been broken and fabricate a new one. That was a bit of a challenge but turned out well. I removed the table top, spread the sides apart, cleaned and glued all of the joints back together before reassembly. All of the doweling was removed, sanded, and reassembled also. Lots of hand sanding removed nicks and scuffs everywhere as well as showed the beautiful wood grain that was hidden underneath the old brown paint.

Minwax has a very nice Golden Oak stain that made wood look really pop. After that was about five coats of polyurethane with steel wool rub between each coat. Both projects were labor intensive but well worth the effort. The magazine rack is my favorite of the two. It has such a bright finished look to it now.

We finally found an outlet to show our products, so both pieces plus a couple more are now setting in a crafting shop in downtown Fairbanks now. 'Rings and Things' is a small co-op shop that displays local arts and crafts in the tourist district. I have a few ideas for more pieces to show in this store but they may have to wait a while (as always). It looks like I am heading back to New Mexico again next week. I have more helicopter work to do. It is tough bouncing back and forth but I am extremely grateful to Aerotech for giving me the ability to work. They always seem to come through just when we really need it.