scholar
Established Member
There have been a couple of threads recently on restoring Ercol furniture:
Can I use an orbital sander, what pad (Ercol Restoration) and
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/restoring-ercol-daybed.134062/
I have found the various inputs helpful and so I thought I would add some detail of my project currently underway.
I have an Ercol Jubilee Settee that is going to be made more contemporary with new cushions along the lines of this one:
It was in fairly scruffy condition with some splits in the bent corners and the finish, whilst not looking too bad from a distance was rather grey and lifeless as well as being scratched/damaged in places. Whilst my initial plan had been to paint the frame, which would have been easy, I decided this would not be right for its intended location and so I want to refinish it with a decent oiled finish - Osmo being my go-to finish (from a very limited repertoire).
So the first job was to glue up the splits:
For this I used Chair Doctor Glue - all the splits repaired fine except one really stiff one needed a little wedge of new beech (arrowed) - incidentally, I have various bits of beech, but I had to be very selective to find some that wasn’t pinky as most of this frame is much lighter):
The Chair Doctor Glue does work really well I find, using the smallest syringe needle supplied. I also glued up any spindles that seemed remotely loose (a few were rattling) - in most cases, I drilled a couple of 1mm holes into the joint where I could insert the syringe needle:
Then to commence the stripping. The threads referred to above have some discussion of stripping techniques. As far as I know, this furniture was factory-finished with a 2-pack cellulose lacquer - I understand that paint stripper will work on this and I have some old Nitromors available, but think I may get away without using this. My approach thus far is to scrape the finish off and then sand: 60 only where necessary/80/120/180 which is probably good enough for oiling, we will see. What I have found is that the lacquer scrapes off very easily from where you can get down to bare wood that sands easily. The most difficult part is assessing how far to go in making sure that not only the lacquer has gone, but also any residual staining of the wood - I have found that I need to keep going back to areas and looking at them in different lights to check any yellow blotchiness has gone (I am concerned to avoid a blotchy finish when applying the new hard wax oil). Whilst I thought that the spindles were going to be the most tedious and hard work, in fact I think the main frame is the toughest part - we will see. Anyway, this is where I have got to so far:
I may have reached the limit on photos, so will continue on a new message…
Can I use an orbital sander, what pad (Ercol Restoration) and
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/restoring-ercol-daybed.134062/
I have found the various inputs helpful and so I thought I would add some detail of my project currently underway.
I have an Ercol Jubilee Settee that is going to be made more contemporary with new cushions along the lines of this one:
It was in fairly scruffy condition with some splits in the bent corners and the finish, whilst not looking too bad from a distance was rather grey and lifeless as well as being scratched/damaged in places. Whilst my initial plan had been to paint the frame, which would have been easy, I decided this would not be right for its intended location and so I want to refinish it with a decent oiled finish - Osmo being my go-to finish (from a very limited repertoire).
So the first job was to glue up the splits:
For this I used Chair Doctor Glue - all the splits repaired fine except one really stiff one needed a little wedge of new beech (arrowed) - incidentally, I have various bits of beech, but I had to be very selective to find some that wasn’t pinky as most of this frame is much lighter):
The Chair Doctor Glue does work really well I find, using the smallest syringe needle supplied. I also glued up any spindles that seemed remotely loose (a few were rattling) - in most cases, I drilled a couple of 1mm holes into the joint where I could insert the syringe needle:
Then to commence the stripping. The threads referred to above have some discussion of stripping techniques. As far as I know, this furniture was factory-finished with a 2-pack cellulose lacquer - I understand that paint stripper will work on this and I have some old Nitromors available, but think I may get away without using this. My approach thus far is to scrape the finish off and then sand: 60 only where necessary/80/120/180 which is probably good enough for oiling, we will see. What I have found is that the lacquer scrapes off very easily from where you can get down to bare wood that sands easily. The most difficult part is assessing how far to go in making sure that not only the lacquer has gone, but also any residual staining of the wood - I have found that I need to keep going back to areas and looking at them in different lights to check any yellow blotchiness has gone (I am concerned to avoid a blotchy finish when applying the new hard wax oil). Whilst I thought that the spindles were going to be the most tedious and hard work, in fact I think the main frame is the toughest part - we will see. Anyway, this is where I have got to so far:
I may have reached the limit on photos, so will continue on a new message…
Last edited:
