Does Your Antique Furniture Pass The Test? 3 Things To Avoid (& How We Solve Those For You)

by Juanita | Aug 9, 2019 | Ava Lee's History Corner, Furniture Care, Rocking Chairs, Tables

What do you love about your antique furniture? Sentimentality & nostalgia. Those nostalgic feelings probably trigger wonderful memories with your family. Maybe it reminds you of visiting for Christmas as a child or bringing your children over to play baseball in the yard with their grandparents. That is why it is so important to craft furniture that can withstand the years, the memories, the horseplay so you & your families can have visible mementos of those experiences. (Plus, it helps that our furniture is also super comfortable & durable!) 

Even though antique furniture lasts longer than low quality furniture it also deteriorates. Some of the biggest causes of weakness in antique furniture include poor adjustability to extremes in humidity, weak joints or low-quality workmanship.  In fact, today I want to share with you 3 of the biggest issues we see in antique furniture & how we design our furniture differently to avoid those problems.

Humidity

One of the most common issues you may see in wood antique furniture is wear & tear due to changing humidity. Dry Forced Air heat will dry out furniture in the winter while damp summer weather provides extra moisture. Considering these two extremes, all joints are constructed with movement in mind.  Wood is dried in George’s kilns and furniture is constructed in a humidity-controlled environment similar to most homes.  This helps the furniture expand and contract as one unit. When the furniture can respond to humidity as one unit, it is more protected from warping or weakness.

Weak joints

Let’s talk about rung joints. Maybe not a typical topic of conversation until you sit in a chair and the rung pops out leaving your chair in pieces. Aside from the frustration & inconvenience, this can become an expensive situation when your only solution is gluing the rungs for the rest of its life or replacing the chair. We avoid this situation from the beginning with our method of attaching rung joints. We give special attention to our sanding for each rung joint. When completed, the glued wood joint is stronger than the wood itself. George’s chairs have held up over years of hard use. It also saves us wasting time repairing older chairs.

Warped or Stressed Wood

This is caused by wood that is not properly dried before it is protected completely by a finish to slow the change in moisture content during the life of the furniture. The wood needs to be dried to 8% moisture content. Through the planing and sanding process, the wood is ready to be used to build the furniture.

George’s understands that natural wood furniture will continue to breath causing slight expansion and contraction throughout its lifetime. All joints are assembled to allow for this movement in the wood, removing the possibility of loosening of joints and even cracks in the wood itself. Our custom sprayed finish allows wood movement to occur over the complete unit evenly throughout its life.

How Strong Your Table will Be

Our unique way to demonstration table strength. One year we took all our craftsmen along with their families into our showroom and extended one of our tables. We started having 2 people at a time climb up and stand on the table. We continued 2 by 2, the younger kids started laughing, until all 14 people stood on the table, totaling 1,900 pounds in weight, almost a ton. The center legs prevailed.

Non-Tip Rocker

You can especially see the strength of high-quality wood in our non-tip rockers. When George was small, he was having so much fun rocking in his rocking chair that he tipped it right over.  After recovering from the fall, he promised his mother that he would build a rocker that would not tip over. George built that rocker and now there are 7 different sizes from a child’s rocker to a rocker for the large people (300-400 lbs.) Large or small, tall or short, there is a rocker designed for you that does not tip over.

Ready for strong, heirloom furniture that does not wear with age or bad construction?

George’s unwavering commitment to building strong, hardwood, heirloom furniture continues with each new design. Each piece is signed and dated by its maker and finished with a water-resistant finish.  Bring your ideas and desires for functional furniture and George’s craftsmen will make those dreams come true. Call us or request a consult as soon as you are ready to jump in to designing your own high-quality furniture.