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Adam... thanks so much for the updates. I am a huge fan of your restoration ideas and have picked up some things that I may not have thought of. Your project looks great and I'm sure it will turn out to be gorgeous...

Thanks Curt! I'll continue to make updates until this thing is finished and belting out some tunes.

Newest update is the veneer is now on the lid, and here's how I did it:

First I did some research on how do this patchwork veneering, and liked some of the methods this guy has in his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0QDfifQgkk

If you didn't watch it, he used a piece of flat aluminum pipe with sandpaper glued to one side, and sandwiched the two matching pieces of veneer between some flat boards so that he could sand the edges to get a perfect fit when glued down. I didn't have an aluminum pipe, but I do have a jointer and some pine wood so I put some 120g sandpaper on that with some spray glue: Then tapped the matching veneer pieces back-to-back: Then sandwiched it all between a couple boards (one of which is oak plywood) with just a smidgen of the veneer sticking out: And used my new sanding block to even out the edges of veneer, just like the guy in the video: The results of that process were just as I suspected: With the edge matching done, I then used blue 3M painters tape to join all the pieces together (again, like the guy in the video). This is done on the good side that faces up since I'll be putting glue on the back: After everything was cleaned up, I started to heat up the hide glue with my heat gun to make it good and runny: I dumped glue all over the lid and took a bit of time to smooth out all the glue with a little spatula. I was concerned the glue cooled down too much so I reheated it with the heat gun for a few seconds: I then tossed the Frankenstein veneer on there and used this little roller to stick it down. I know there's a veneer hammer tool for just this purpose, but I didn't haven't one and was worried that pulling on the hammer would just tear all the pieces apart. The rolling is just a temporary fix before the fun part: The fun part is the clamps. I have two ½" sheets of MDF that I'm using as sandwich boards to squeeze everything together. Used all my clamps again:

Oh no! I blundered at this point and forgot that there's a very good possibility that the glue will ooze out and get into the MDF sandwich boards and that would make this a permanent sandwich! So I quickly undid all the clamps and put some wax paper in-between the lid and the MDF and then redid all the clamps (ow! my hands!): 24 hours later I undid all the clamps and got this: I'm happy to report that the painters tape worked great at keeping things aligned and together during the whole process. Seems are virtually invisible: There was some expected glue ooze-out, and in hindsight I should have put some painters tape over the rope trim to keep the glue out of there: Now we get to see if this bolt together stencil template thing was a good idea or a waste of time: It worked! I just used an exacto knife and undercut the template just in case I miscalculated the template shape; better to have to take away rather than add wood: There was still much to clean up though as some of the angles were tricky and there was quite a bit of glue ooze-out trying to hold onto bits:

Since the hole was roughly cut out, now it's time to cut off the outer perimeter excess: This required even more fiddly work later because of the ooze-out glue: After many hours of scrubbing with warm water and wittling with an exacto knife (and several blades later), I eventually ended up with all the edges nice and flush to the original wood of the lid: I'll need to sand down the whole lid, do some filling, more sanding, and maybe that bleaching I spoke of before. I'm on the fence about the bleaching since all the veneer bits seem to match pretty good right now. I'll see how the sanding goes on the older wood, but I'm guessing some light staining will be necessary on the new veneer to try to match the tone of the old wood.

My quest now begins for finding some grain filler. Not sure what to use which will be compatible with shellac.

Excellent work, as always... looks great.

Great work. Following your progress with great interest. You will agree with me that it seems there are never enough clamps.

Bill K

I'm really enjoying your progress, and have picked up on some important techniques from the posts, and comments, thanks!

Best,
Fran

Took a bit of a hiatus there, but I'm back now and I'm determined to get this thing done (or at the very least the wood working part done) within a month. The few updates I have are of some staining tests and sanding the box lid.

The staining tests are for trying to age my new veneer and pieces of wood to look more like the rest of the original wood. Last time (a few pages back) I used vinegar, which turns oak almost black. This time I used baking soda mixed with water, and this makes it look just a little bit darker and greyer (depending on how much baking soda you mix).
Then I got to sanding down the rope trim on the lid because it was pretty weathered and wouldn't look very nice if I shellac'd it as is. Plus the new veneer on the top of the lid would stand out with too much contrast between the old and new wood. The sanding is being done with little pieces of emery paper. It's taking a long time, but I'm happy with the results.
I'm still on the prowl for a horn however. I'm not having much luck finding one. I'll post a 'wanted' ad in the Yankee Trader, but it's looking more and more likely that I'll just have to build one.

I think I have a horn for you. How long does it need to be?

I've been watching this thread since before I got my forum membership. This is incredible and Adam, I think you've done the right thing here! Can't wait to see pictures.

Have you shown your family the progress?