rail refinishing/table restoration questions

K

kash7777

Registered
hey guys,

I just picked up a 40's vintage brunswick sportsman, the rails on it are solid walnut but are kind of beatup. Thanks to Ken Hash over at classicbilliards.com, by the way, for helping my identify it, guy said it was a sport king, and I thought so too and had never heard of a sportsman (even though sportsman was painted on the underside of the rails heh). It's a nice solid table, all solid wood, no particle board or plywood, 1-1/8th" slate that's in good shape, one of the aprons has a small split on one end I guess I'll have to take some wood glue too. Table seems to be completely original finish wise, right down to the godawful ugly speckled paintjob on the aprons. I am a complete woodworking/table newbie, if you will, how would I go about refinishing the rails and, in general, bringing this table back to life? any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3576/3506647253_892ea8e3d5.jpg?v=0


more pics on here on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/kash7777/sets/72157617716448039/
 
rails = strip, sand, repair divots, grain fill, sand, sand, sand, stain, finish any way you want for a top coat. Clear coats will scratch. Teak oil and tongue oil will also scratch but can be dressed again later in place. A highly waxed top looks nice and will not.

Just do a search on the net and you will find all the info and detailed procedures. Its easy, fun and rewarding when your done.
 
Well I stripped the rails using strip-x, think I'm going to have to use a couple more coats of it then clean using steel wool and turpentine. Seems to be a lot of cigarette burns on the table... any suggestions on how to get stain/burns out of the wood? should I be thinking about bleaching it or will they just come out from sanding? Right now I'm planning on using some Minwax dark walnut stain on the rails and ball box after I fill in any wood defects with minwax stainable filler and maybe some clear minwax poly as a top coat, though I'm undecided about that. Any suggestions otherwise are appreciated though.

The rubber on it is the original monarch K-55 rails which seemed fairly lively to me and seem to be in decent shape after uncovering them, but I didn't have a lot of time to check everywhere for deadspots, should I just go ahead and replace them anyways now that I have the rails uncovered? The slate has a couple good scratches on it that go all the way across them apparently from someone sliding them on top of each other. Should I bondo those scratches or just use beeswax to fill them in later when I recover the whole thing?

pics of the whole thing can be found on the flickr stream in the first post, last 5 or so show the rails after a couple coats of strip-x. Appreciate any suggestions/help.

Thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top