Thursday, March 11, 2010

All Done

Well its been a while and I figured I should rap up this blog. I have completely restored this chair to original specifications, with one minor change. Originally I believe most of these Plycraft chairs were upholstered in vinyl, I decided to go with real Italian leather. Black of course. Overall as I said in my prior post this chair had its share of issues. It was pretty beat and needed some TLC to get it back to proper working order. The ply had begun to separate in a few places and I had to reach back to my boat building experience to remedy those areas. Epoxy and glass are wonderful tools if you use proper care and attention in their application. The wood overall on this chair was pretty chewed up, lots of scratches, dings and dents. I used my orbital sander to pretty much wipe away years of use. I did use an initial run of 80 grit to remove the older varnish. Then moved to finer grits careful to not burn out or through layers of ply. After this was done I tack clothed the each piece, sealed, stained and polyurethaned each of the ply pieces. After several light coats of poly I steelwooled each piece and hand waxed them. See my other blog for details on this process. Take your time and do a good job. The hardware on this chair was all in need of a quick recoat of black paint. So that was easy enough a little rustolium cleaned them up nicely. Upholstery work was similar to the other blog, your basic cut, center, staple affair. Then trimming it out with some leather welting and she was finished. Overall time was less than my Eames copies, I would say I tagged and bagged this chair in about 3 afternoons. If the economy was a bit better I would put it up on ebay and resell it. I thought I would dig it a bit more than I actually do. I am more of an eames guy and as neat as this chair is it doesn’t fit in with the other Eames related items in my home.

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