Boulle Clock Restoration - Almost Done

It has been a while since I posted anything as a friend reminded me couple days ago. So I thought I would do an update on couple projects I have been working on.

On an earlier post I had shown the start of a restoration on a Boulle clock.

We had restored the top part,

since I have been working on the 2 lower elements. I did not took a lot of picture of the restoration of the middle section

But I documented better the restoration of the lower section that was particularly damaged.

A lot of lifted elements

A quite a bit of missing brass

The last pictures shows the most difficult part to repair. There is very little indications left of the original design and it is on a tight radius surface.

First order of business is to remove the bronzes.

Lift the elements that wants to lift and rehydrate the glue for a deep cleaning.

Rubbing of the missing elements on thermal fax paper

The brass and the cavity needs to be cleaned.

Then missing elements are cut. The shell elements are cut on a CITES pre-banned shell with a black paper and black fish glue backing

The curved surface are always the fun one to glue. For some of the shape I used a compressed foam and on other sand bags. I screwed a piece of wood under the table with angled notches to get a good grip at different angles.

The front part of the lower element had not a lot of informations regarding all the missing top elements as I said earlier, but by adding the informations from each side and looking at the style of decoration throughout the clock, I was able to extrapolate a convincing design.

This picture was taken after engraving the elements

And during the pore filling which fills up the kerf marks and the engraving with black, “noir de fumée”, pigments.

Currently I am finishing the pore-filling on some elements of the clock as well as a Boulle decanter I have been working on, I will post later on this project, and soon the french polish is going to start, cleaning of the bronzes etc… But that will be for next time.