Learned my lesson on restores this week

Last year a good customer of mine asked me to design and build a corner table for his indoor fountain. He wanted the wood to be light and the design to be airy and open. I liked the water theme so I picked out some beautiful curly birch. The figuring in the grain seemed to extend the water beyond the fountain. I finished it in one of my go-to finishes which minimized the ambering effect and gave it some water resistance.

Little did my customer know that his fountain did two things it wasn't supposed to do. 1. It splashed tiny drops of water beyond itself onto the surrounding wall and also the table. 2. It leaked in such a way as to hide the water, holding it in place for probably a few months between the fountain and the table top.

The result looked like this.

I told him confidently that I could fix it BEFORE I saw what it looked like. I didn't know it was this bad. It proved too deeply damaged for my orbital sander. So I went to the belt sander. Then I set up my router to take more material off. I realized that I was going to have to go well over a quarter of an inch to get to the bottom of the damage and that made the top too weak to hold the new 80lb fountain.

Long story short, I ended up cutting the top off. Quick props to Titebond III glue. It held up under the watery conditions. But I ended up using some extreme router work to get the old top off. Here's the new curly birch top sitting in the shop waiting for the glue to dry. You can see the mangled old one in the background.

The table will hold a new fountain which shouldn't leak and spatter like the old one. But just to be sure, I will be finishing the top with a penetrating epoxy. Epoxy is a new treatment here at Chapelwood and I'm happy to be adding it to options for hard-use table tops.

So here's the lesson I learned. From now on, whenever I do a restore, I will look at it first. Solid wood furniture is much more durable, repairable, and beautiful than the big box MDF stuff. In this case, I couldn't save the top. But I could save the piece. I just will add a little more caution to my confidence that all damage can be easily repaired.

Keep up with progress by hovering over "About" on the top Chapelwoodworks.com ribbon and click on "Happening Now." It's actually a repeat of my Instagram page, and this is where you can keep up with what's going on in the shop.