Today in my shop (desk drawer repair)

[reible]

Hi,

I was ask to repair a drawer out of an antique desk a while back. It is one of those projects that come along once in while where I really didn't know how to proceed on.

Starting issue was the bottom of the drawer, someone at sometime decided to nail it in place, not a great idea nor a well done project. To make things even more interesting a section of the bottom was broken away and one corner of the front drawer bottom was a piece of chipboard taped in place to keep things in the drawer rather then fall out though the hole. Some of the "dove tails" must have come undone and they were nailed back in place....

While old this desk in not fine furniture or in other words this was not a restoration but I agreed to retain what I could of the original design and parts. I've decided to share this with you, just in case it might be useful at sometime.

Sorry I didn't take picture of the "starting" condition. Non did I take a lot of pictures of the steps along the way. What I do have pictures of is what it looks like now.

I removed the nails holding the bottom in place, and removed the bottom. Where it had been nailed the wood was split so I squared and trimmed that portion of the bottom. I also removed the section where it was broken (split)out along the front edge. A crack and formed along the grain but had not spread to far. I decided not to attempt to flatten that section as I was worried it might cause the whole piece to split. I simply glued it as it was.

This cutting of course made the bottom to short... To fix this I added another piece which was the same width as the original and the correct length but I had no wood that matched the "look" of the old wood. To be honest it visually looked way to different, it looked like someone went to a hardware store and got a hunk of wood to fill the space. This is when the idea came to me to make a piece which while not original to this desk sure could have been. It was common on some desks to have a place for ink bottles and places for pens and pencils. Fired up the router and made a part that I think makes it look better and is functional.

This piece is attached by some brass screws hidden below the drawer and this also allows the bottom to still be removed if that is even needed (the new piece is to tall to slip out with the bottom thus the need to be removable).

The nails in the front dovetails I removed and re-glued joints, that turned out well enough. The rear joints done with secondary woods were a little worse off so I glued them in place and left the nails alone.

Now it's time to pack the drawer up for a ride to the UP of MI later this month or early Oct. Hope the drawer meets muster.... No $$ involved but you still want people satisfied with the work you have done.

Oh yea the pictures:
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Ed

[a1gutterman]

Nice repair job, Ed! I do like your pencil tray solution.

[keakap]

Can't beat "Better Than New"!

Elegant solution, methinks.