Antique Furniture REPAIR

     This is a very common example of damage that occurs to older furniture.  Damage to the ornate carved appliqué work is heartbreaking, because you can't just go to the store and buy a new piece to replace the damaged one.  Chances are you probably couldn't when the piece was new either, so what can you do?
     In this case, even though it looks pretty bad. The repair was fairly straight forward, had more of the work been missing it could have been another story.

Steps to take;
1.)Cleanup the area around the missing work, and if the break is kind of rough square it up with a chisel or a file.
2.)Figure out what kind of wood your working with.
This chest was Walnut, and chances are the appliqué was also.  The appliqué could be Mahogany,  but since they are very similar in grain pattern and both carve very well and look identical when finished, I chose to use Mahogany(because I had some small scrap in my shop.)
3.)I trimmed a small piece down to the right thickness, roughly cut it to shape and glued it in place.

4.) Carving...the trick is to take your time and always use very sharp tools,  especially with small work.  There is very little margin for error, so chip out or tearing of the wood has to be avoided. Most of the final shaping is done with files and a little sandpaper.  I can make no claim at being a great wood carver, but I have spent a considerable amount of time with a chisel in my hand.

5.)Finishing...the finished product, stained and shellaced to to match the original work. Matching stains can be very difficult.  I first start out the finishing process by darkening the wood with a little dye, to kind of age the wood, then it is a trial and error stain battle.  I find it usual takes a combination of stains added in layers to get the job done.  Also the darker the shellac the better when matching old work.  To further age the work a couple coats of wax buffed with ultra-fine steel wool, and there you have it
                  JUST LIKE NEW! or I MEAN OLD!                                     or JUST PERFECTLY AGED!