Restoration of a Louis XVI period chest of drawers from eastern France in solid oak and fir and veneered with end-grain wood of laburnum, walnut, plum, amaranth, rosewood, palisander, boxwood and green-stained hornbeam.
The handles and keyholes were postponed to a later date. The original trim is gone; only the holes for the handles remain.
This is a piece of furniture that has never been restored. The veneer is almost 4 mm thick in some places, and traces of files, a toothed plane, and sea dog skin can be seen on the surface of the side panels.
The major problem with this chest of drawers is on the sides. They are completely warped. The fir planks that make up the solid part are placed horizontally, and due to the drying of the wood and dimensional changes, they have split, causing "waves" with hollows of more than 7 mm.
I therefore had to remove the veneer from both sides, which allowed me to discover some tool marks, including shoe polish and toothed iron marks. I was also able to observe the assembly of the side panels, which are joined to the sides with tongue and groove and mortise and tenon joints. This is very consistent with the work of a provincial workshop.
Tenon pegs 
deformation near deposit 
Trace of a sign of establishment 
Boxwood fillet graft 
Fillet graft
Once the veneer was removed, I glued strips of solid fir where material was missing. Then, using a router and a template, I reshaped the surface to create a perfectly flat finish. The veneer grafts were made on a stretched block, and I created a raised edge on the back face. The side veneers were then reattached using hot glue under vacuum.
The drawer veneers were rehydrated by vacuum-sealed glue infiltration with a slight application of heat. This allowed for the correction of the slight unevenness caused by the difference between the end-grain and grain-grain veneers.
Vacuum re-gluing of drawer fronts 
Glued solid fir wood to compensate for gaps 
Hot re-gluing
Finally, the old varnish was stripped with a stripper suitable for furniture restoration. Then I applied a colorless French polish.
