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Anonymous
90-something year old ship's wheel restoration 2016-08-13 19:07:30 Post No.
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90-something year old ship's wheel restoration 2016-08-13 19:07:30 Post No.
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Hey /diy/ my brother gifted my father this wheel from a friend's derelict boat a few years back for use as a decoration on his dock. The boat sat on a trailer in the Texas sun for decades without protection from the elements.
The high humidity and frequent rains have caused a lot of warping and cupping in the wood of the craft. The wheel itself seems to have been spared from that and is in pretty good shape considering. It is however very loose and gaps have opened in the joints between pieces. There are a few cracks in some of the turned parts and in the wheel itself. Some of the dowels are standing proud of the wheel but not by much. None are noticeably loose.
My plan is to sand everything down to bare wood, put epoxy+sawdust in the cracks, and coat it with some wipe on poly. As much as I'd like to take it apart and replace anything that ought to be, I lack to skill to do so. I've been told that I should put oil (linseed, tung, Danish) to rehydrate the wood and perhaps cause it to close the gaps and tighten the wheel some.
My question to you is, what would you do?
Pic related
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Reverse side
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Loose 1/2
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Loose 2/2
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File: the hub is basically a brass-painted bean can.jpg (185KB, 1500x1125px)
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if you clean and varnish it and polish the hub there'll be no way to tell it apart from a $20 chinese-made wallhanger
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>>1037949
this guy knows whats up. Antiques are best left the way they are, if they aren't kept well then you're fucked.
So clean, sand, and varnish and ruin its appeal or keep it as it is.
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>>1037923
Step 1: Dont use wipe on poly. It performs like garbáge.
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>>1037965
He isnt going to varnish it. What are you talking about.
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If you want to go for something traditional, and effective, go for Pine Tar (Swedish), paired with Boiled Linseed Oil as a top coat. The pine tar acts as a preservant, seeping in the wood, and the BLO seals it in. It looks to be in nice shape, andI wouldn't really reccomend any kind of sanding or buffing of sorts, but you could try cleaning it with something such as denatured alcohol, but even that is iffy. If you like it the way it is visually, just use the tar and oil on it, that will deepen it.
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>>1037923
Just leave it, OP.
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>>1037923
I would leave it mostly as is. Don't use any fillers, etc, it will make it look like garbage. It's better off with the antique patina. You can do some VERY light sanding (don't sand off the patina) to remove splinters and blemishes, maybe some light scraping with a very sharp chisel to remove the peeling paint, then coat it with boiled linseed oil to protect it from degrading further, without the artificial look that a poly will give. Hang it up somewhere and enjoy your conversation piece.
If that's impossible, you can do a complete refinishing on it, but thats a fairly complex process if you don't have experience already. Google a wood finishing guide, do some practice projects first.
Thread posts: 12
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Thread images: 6