Third bit from the right

In June last year I came across a fantastic second-hand store in a small town called Tarrington, near Hamilton in Victoria. One of those places crammed with a mess of old stuff you could spend hours sifting through. My best find was a wooden chest, probably dating back to the 1860s or thereabouts.

First up I removed all the crap:

• the fabric cover and the carpet(!) padding under it
• the manky old cushion attached to the lid
• the wooden kick boards around the bottom
• the wooden edging on the lid

What I revealed was a box with a lot of history going on. Loads of dents and scratches, and it was missing 12 of its 18 original metal brackets around the edges but the structure itself was pretty sound overall. And it had wonderful hand-made hinges and handles, all in excellent condition.

Here’s what I did:

• stripped the layers of brown, blue and green paint and sanded the wooden carcass
• did some minor repairs, like filling some of the bigger holes
• stripped the metal fittings
• cut new brackets (well, my assistant did) from a sheet of 0.4 mm steel
• primed the new metal and then sprayed all old and new metal with several coats of semi-gloss black paint
• drilled holes in the brackets and attached them to the box with screws (not nails like in the 6 remaining brackets)
• masked-up all the wooden parts and sprayed the metal again, mainly to paint the screwheads
• put 3 coats of Danish oil on the wood and then a coat of beeswax on the lid only
• attached a couple of long, thin pieces of wood to the base to raise the box up off the floor (to avoid scratching from the brackets and screws)

Here’s the end result. It still has lots of imperfections but I like that.