Restoring Ercol Pebble Tables, a Progress report on removing Dark Finish

Since recently acquiring a set of three of the famous pebble tables in a rather sorry state I have made a start on stripping the dark finish in preparation for their revamp as "Natural Blondes". There are a few points of interest to pass on discovered whilst working on them. The first is that the top does not appear to be elm but a much lighter and harder wood. It contrasts with the three little round seatings underneath which fix the legs and with their grey colour DO appear to be elm. A test oiling of the underside of the top indicates that my normal method will result in a very light finish so I might look at other options. Whilst sanding, slightly flexing the legs of the smallest pebble revealed that two joints in the top were starting to separate and could develop into serious cracks. One was plainly open. I pondered on the glue to use initially planning on use two part epoxy, (Araldite), warmed with a hairdryer to thin the glue and aid joint penetration. In the end I settled on an experimental trial of Chair Doctor. The top was completely sanded prior to dribbling Chair Doctor along the open joints. The legs were gently flexed to assist the C-D to find its way deep into the cracks by capillary action. Whilst the glue was setting an elastic Bungee was hooked around the legs to press the joints together as the thinner the joint the stronger the finished item. The experiment is a success with joins now invisible, including the joint which had been a distinct crack. Chair Doctor claims to swell wood to tighten joints and does seem to have worked to close up the hairline crack which the top had. The middle table has a distinct gaping joint in the top and will be last to be looked at. Interestingly it sees that at some point Ercol changed the direction of the "planking" on pebble tops. On my old set the joint run perpendicular to the longest span which seems to be asking for trouble. On the largest one Ercol acknowledge this weakness by their addition of a long ovalised strengthening piece screwed to the underside. In contrast my more recent Golden Dawn large pebble has planking running the proper way

Fixing dents in Ercol tables

I'm slowly progressing with the refurbishment of my nest of dark Ercol Pebble occasional tables. The smallest has been completely rubbed down and I've set to work on the largest. Apart from the nasty cream paint and removal of the original dark stain it has a few little 5mm wide dents on the surface of the tabletop. I had starting sanding this and it became apparent that marks would still be visible below stain level and I didn't want to have to carry on sanding good wood to remove them. Apart from the work involved, pebble tops are rather thin and I didn't want to weaken it more than necessary. Sanding had reached the level that clean wood was visible overall but stain still remained in the grain. I had come across a dent removal solution involving use of a steam iron but decided to try just cold water with a tiny amount of washing up detergent. The dents in the top were just compression damage and no wood had been removed and I was hoping that water would soak into the crushed wood fibres causing them to swell to their original shape and the dents would "heal". The technique used was to wet the immediate area around a dent leaving a standing puddle which was left for several hours, (or days depending on what I was doing), then repeated probably 6-7 times. I haven't made any scientific measurement but it does seem to have been successful in reducing denting significantly to the extent that the sanding still needed to remove the grain staining will be enough and this final rub down will also remove some light water staining has occurred.

Sanding is so soothing

Another project has been completed. Number one (and only) son has moved into his first unfurnished house and we promised him our old Ercol circular drop leaf table. Since we acquired our 5-legged extending dining table the old drop leaf has been living in the kitchen and is was really too big for the space. We needed to replace it with something smaller and square so snapped up an Ercol kitchen table, the rectangular design with spindle shelf underneath which sits nicely with two Windsor chairs in our breakfast/blogging corner. The new table isn't in great condition with an ink stain and joint separation to the top but that's something for the future. The table came with 4 light finish Windsor chairs, (60s or 70s era?) and these were suffering from being stored in a loft, shrinkage had loosened leg and back joints and the finish was looking dull. As the whole table and chair set were reasonably priced, no-one else bid on Ebay, and they were 10 miles from me so I'd been able to inspect prior to bidding I knew what I was letting myself in for. The initial plan was to fix the many loose joints with Chair Doctor as described in my other blog postings and give the chairs a quick polish. It didn't work out like that though as I started cleaning some black scuff marks from the bottom of a leg using a Cif on a paper towel and found that the finish was coming off to expose bare wood. Further experimenting showed that I could make good progress stripping off the old coating with Cif on a green nylon pot scourer rinsing off periodically with water. Against my better judgement I decided to go for a complete strip and refinish. I don't know if all light finishes will come off as easily, maybe a production run using some sort of water based lacquer or maybe the finish has become delicate with ageing. If you want to try the same method I recommend testing on a small section out of view. Tips for Cif/scourer stripping: Don't let the wood get too wet, scour, rinse, wipe down and move to a different section frequently. Best to work outdoors on a windy day. The scourer will get clogged with lacquer debris so wash it out frequently. Don't glue joints before scouring like I did as many became loose, possibly water dissolving Chair Doctor. (Re-Chair Doctoring worked fine.) Although scouring took away the donkey work of initial strip by sanding, (I prefer not to use chemical strippers), at some stage the sandpaper has to come out. After doing a LOT of chairs now I have a few tips which will help you get an acceptable finish and save wasted effort. Like many tasks, the devil is in the detail. It is very tempting to get out the sandpaper and start attacking a large easy area which gives the illusion of progress. Unfortunately when you then move on to those difficult crevices around dowel joints you will end up re-sanding a lot of the easy stuff you already worked on. For that reason I start by sanding all of the joints and work outwards. To minimise leaving sanding marks I cut finger shaped pieces of 120 grit Aluminium Oxide paper and work in oval movements as much with the grain as I can. Avoid holding the ends of a strip and "towelling" as this will leave circumferential marks which will show badly. Once the difficult bits are done the long sections of spindles are easily sanded along the grain and where you meet the fiddly bits you sanded earlier its possible to reduce any sanding marks you were unable to avoid. You can do the whole job by hand but I found that the deep grain of the elm seats made it hard work so used a power detail sander, Lidl's finest :-), one with a rounded triangular sanding pad. With care it can be used on the curved faces of legs and bow, the technique is to dangle the chair from one hand whilst lightly brushing against the sander held in the other in a sort of random motion frequently changing where the chair is held. Avoid pressure or concentrating on one place as "flatting" of a rounded profile could result. Be careful not to over-sand, the aim is to retain the profiles of the original piece, keep sharp edges sharp. If you have a set of chairs for instance it's a good idea to work on one at a time leaving one original untouched so that you have a pattern to follow. As always The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good I don't believe that it's practical to achieve a totally invisible refinishing job especially if stripping dark finish. (I've mentioned before that removing dark finish often reveals that Ercol quite sensibly used beech with unsightly coloured graining which wouldn't be visible the finished article.) Fortunately I'm more interested in having furniture to use and enjoy than to recreate collector's items.

Coffee Table Book. A Review of Ercol: Furniture in the Making by Lesley Jackson

Ercol: Furniture in the Making by Lesley Jackson published by Richard Dennis Publications ISBN 978 09553741 97 192pp rrp £25

Looking very at home on my Pebble table, Lesley Jackson's book traces the history of a business started by an immigrant Italian family whose products literally became "part of the furniture" of British society in the years after the Second world War. Lesley Jackson draws on contemporary sources including Lucian Ercolani's own memoir to recount the interesting story of how a combination of clever design, good business sense and paternalistic management style steered Ercol, originally called Furniture Industries Ltd, through difficult times during which other famous names like G Plan disappeared. The fact that the company exists to this day, owned and managed by the same family and still manufacturing a proportion of its furniture in Britain is a testament to the sound principles instilled by the founder. The Ercolani family left Italy in 1898 because of their non-conformist beliefs, membership of the Salvation Army, did not sit well with their Catholic neighbours and it seems like karma that Ercolani's designs for the Windsor range would come to be influenced by another non-conformist group, the Shakers. A visit to the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1923 which had a display of Shaker furniture with its minimalist and functional style left a deep impression and shaped the idealism which inspired not only designs but also the principles by which the Ercol company was run. Success with wartime contracts to supply utility furniture led to the creation of the classic Windsor designs which with their simplicity of form and functionality have retained their popularity for over half a century looking just as good now in a contemporary setting. The book is generously illustrated, modern photos of signature pieces including the love seat and butterfly chair and also fascinating period photography of the shop floor. From the 1920s, Ercolani commissioned professional photographers to document the works and these are brought up to date with a modern sequence of the manufacture of a Quaker dining chair. The illustrations taken for catalogues in the sixties and seventies are a window on the times; did we really have carpets and wallpaper in those colours? A reminder also of how we felt the need to define the territories of that sixties phenomenon the lounge/diner with a room divider. There are also reproductions of the company's identification sheets and lists of dimensions. All a feast for an Ercol enthusiast who wants to identify and date a classic piece, the emphasis is largely on Windsor but Ercol's other ranges are also well covered. I can't imagine a better book on the subject apart perhaps from a limited edition with real elm covers! To buy a copy direct from the publisher's web site follow this LINK

Most Overpriced Pebble Tables

HERE A set of patriotically painted pebbles to appeal to any Noo Yawk hipster. Asking price $1600! You cannot be serious!

Downcycled

The current craze for upcycling, the euphemism for badly painting any old piece of furniture has a lot to answer for. Today's misguided buy at the boot sale is the nest of three pebble tables pictured above. The seller had found them in a shop just after the vendor had committed an atrocity with a paint brush and some chalk paint. He knocked a tenner off his price without even being asked so I thought I would take a punt. Underneath they are dark finish but with the top of the middle one suffering some joint separation and all three having marks on the tops they are candidates for a complete strip, sand and refinish job. I've always been a bit ambivalent about sets of Ercol pebble tables as the smallest one really isn't much use. Prices have shot up since the design was reissued so I had resisted the temptation to add a set to my collection. (That didn't stop me buying an immaculate single large pebble in Golden Dawn last year as we did need a small coffee table for the garden room.) The paint job may be hiding a multitude of sins but hopefully I will end up with set restored in light finish that are in nice enough to use but not valuable enough to worry about.

Windsor chairs in Korea

Undoubtedly the grooviest coffee shop in the world has some rather ercolesque seating. Picture HERE. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

New Book for all Ercol Windsor enthusiasts

Ercol: Furniture in the making. By Lesley Jackson (Richard Dennis £25) I came across a reference to this in House and Garden, I haven't seen a copy yet but looks like a must read for anyone with an interest in Ercol, old and new.

Ercol Windsor on the telly

I've just noticed that a few pieces of light Ercol Windsor have been been making walk on appearances in some TV ads. Bt's broadband services HERE Ribena's new ad HERE And there's a sausage ad, (can't remember the brand) featuring a plank table. Presumably the characters in the BT ad are no longer poor students if they can afford such a big TV and the latest 6 spindle Windsor chair :-)

Why Ercol Windsor?

Since starting this Blog I have been surprised and rather pleased to see the number of daily views that I get and Google Analytics shows that it is often searched for information on Ercol restoration and repair. There is obviously a good deal of interest in old Ercol connected to the fashion for all things retro, (though for me at nearly 60 it's just contemporary furniture and some of mine was bought new by me). That's probably the answer; that Ercol produced some timeless designs in the Windsor range which still look good today without having to be post-ironic like much retro/junk shop furniture. That and sticking to a theme and a process of design evolution rather than coming up with dramatic re-vamps every few years. For us it meant that when we we were able to afford a couple of extra dining chairs years after buying our original dining set the identical model was still available. Ercol themselves have recognised the popularity of some of their classics and have reissued some heritage items in their Ercol Originals Range. Latterly our Ercol collection has been augmented by pieces found on Ebay and this has been one of the great factors behind its continuing popularity. A heck of a lot Windsor was made over the years and much has survived in good condition. Thanks to Ebay most of the more common pieces can be found easily so provided that you don't live on Orkney you shouldn't have to wait long seaching for a particular item. Unusually for interior design items, Ercol furniture has a certain level of bloke appeal. Anyone who grazed their knuckles in school woodwork classes can appreciate the perfect dovetail joints on cabinet corners. Rather than hide joints away, they have been made a feature. Not that these have been made by horny handed old craftsmen chiselling away, Ercol is the product of machines and an assembly line. Engineering in wood. Light finish is the most popular and the fabulous grain on natural coloured pieces goes well with wood floors Wear is particularly unkind to dark finish which polishes through to bare wood after years of elbow contact. It is also easier to refinish in a light colour and many dark pieces have now been stripped or may be revived by painting in bright colours. Even the comparatively unloved dark Old Colonial designs have had a bit of a renaissance by stripping dresser tops and painting drawers and cabinet with Farrow and Ball pastel colour paint. There is no need to be too precious about Ercol Windsor it's not rare or enough to obsess about preservation, it's about well designed and servicale furniture to be used and enjoyed in a family home. Postscript. We recently had a pile of recent house decor magazines passed on and leafing through revealed a lot of Ercol Windsor, if not featured as items then in the background dressing the room. Looks like us Ercol Windsor fans are surfing the Zeitgeist :-)

Ercol Timeline

I came across this interesting offical Ercol timeline HERE

Highly Strung. Replacing Ercol Pirelli elastic rubber webbing

The natural rubber in the original webbing eventually biodegrades and sags

New webbing was ordered from http://skiddawupholstery.org.uk/ . It arrived promptly and fitted perfectly.

 

To help fitting I made this tool out of an old bicycle spoke.

Contrary to the advice in the Skiddaw leaflet it's better to fit the short webs first as the long ones are easier to stretch. I also avoided using the silicon spray they recommend as I don't think it would be good for the life of the rubber. There is a definite knack to doing this, you need a good strong pull. I used pliers to hold the spoke/tool and as the loop pulled through the frame I used my other hand on top to lock the strap and prevent it springing back. A case of little by little. Once the loop has come through far enough (and prevented from springing back by a thumb on top of the seat frame), remove the tool before inserting the dowel.

Tadaa!!!! The finished object.

Wilson's Original Devon Wood Oil for Renovating Light Ercol Finish

Original Ercol finishes were sprayed on at the factory and this is outside the scope of amateur renovation. An alternative which can be used for the light natural finish is to use a wood oil. I have used Wilson's Devon Wood Oil on several projects around the house to seal oak veneered chipboard doors and a veneered MDF window seat. A single coat as used in the pic above produces a satin finish enhancing natural grain. My project to strip and re-finish a pair of dark colour Windsor chairs had got the first frame down to bare wood so a trial area was treated to check the finished colour on beech wood. The result is a touch paler and less yellow than the original light cloured kitchen chairs which I have but to my eye a great improvement on the worn out dark original.

There are some advantages to using oil over some form of varnish. There are no drips or brushmarks and any future wear marks can be re-treated to make an invisible restoration. The frame was given a single light coat, just enough to brush in well and cover any bare areas and was then rubbed down with a soft cotton cloth to remove any excess.

Wilson's Original Devon Wood Oil boasts that it is made from only natural ingredients including real turpentine which gives it a pleasant pine smell which disappears in time. It has recently been awarded a Royal Warrant and carries the coat of arms that says it is By Appointment to HM the Queen who no doubt uses it to polish Pholip's Wooden leg. (Here comes another superinjunction!).

Fixing Loose Joints in Ercol Chairs, More Thoughts.

I describe using Chair Doctor Glue in my first post and over the last week I have been working my way through a pile of Quaker Windsor chair glueing loose backs etc. I have come up with a sequence which will I hope have the best chance of achieving a successful result. Leave the glue to harden fully for a day in between each section

1. Upend the chair and work on the joints where legs are fixed into the seat base and the H brace between the legs. Unless you can achieve a rock solid base there is no point in going any further

2. With the chair upside down again, glue the top of the back spindles into the arch. This sequence is favoured because it allows maximum free play with spindles able to be jiggled and twisted to maximise glue pentration into the fixing holes. When happy that the joint is well glued push spindles into the arch as hard as possible.

Note how flexing the back opens up the joint to allow glue in.

A ring of glue around each joint. When applying glue leave a gap to allow air to escape as glue seeps in.

3. Chair right way up, glue arch and spindles into seat base, when glue has penetrated, flip chair and glue where arch and wedges poke through the base. It can help if this area is roughened to soak the end grain as Chair Doctor claims to swell the wood as well as glueing the hole perimeter.

4. Everything should now be tight and twangy, if some spindle joints have failed to fix another tactic can be employed. This involves drilling the tiniest possible hole to allow the glue syringe to get into the blind socket of a joint. This is the reason that I recommend gluing the arch first as this gives it a better chance of achieving a strong joint as it is difficult to conceal a drill hole in the bow of the back. On the other hand a drill hole up through the seat base will not be noticed. If leg joints need drilling, do this from the inside to make holes hard to spot.

Ercol Model 252 Fleur de Lys Easy Chair

Sometimes free is just too expensive. I was looking for a couple of light finish 203s but someone responded to the wanted ad on our works virtual notice board offering a pair of dark 252s gratis. Well gift horses and all that. Surely it wouldn't be too much work to sand off the dark and refinish in oil? How wrong can you be? I had had a bad experience with dip and strip which had made a mess of one of the "family heirloom" utility chairs so resolved to do it the hard way. After many hours one is sanded ready for treatment. Some power tools were used but it is down to old fashioned elbow grease in the end. I think I have found a specialist stripper who can do the second one without damage so will report on their services in due course.

Whilst it is tempting to change a less popular dark piece to the natural wood finish more in fashion now there are pitfalls. In some places stain finds its way into an area of open grain and just won't sand out. Also I suspect that beech components with knots or coloured grain were sent to the dark finish production line to hide the wood imperfections. I'd say that an invisible refinishing job is impossible to achieve but it's not important if you just want furniture to use.

I wouldn't try and do such an intricate piece again, but if something free and tempting came along....

Ercol Image Archive

Archive of Ercol Images

Chance Find. An image archive at the University of High Wycombe, home of Ercol. Historic pictures of furniture and production.

Ercol Windsor Utility Chairs

Shopping for something for an Ercol restoration project, (of which more another day), I came upon a couple of these. The original 1944 pattern Windsor utility chair still in service for shop customers wishing to rest their legs. Note the no 290 mark and trademark sphynx transfer.

Restoring Ercol Windsor Quaker Chairs.

Restoring Ercol Windsor Quaker Chairs.

 

My dining room set bought new 25 years ago had the low back Windsor “kitchen” chairs, but I always had a soft spot for the elegant high arched Quaker pattern which my parents had . I successfully bid on a very nice condition extending dining table, (the five legged one), and this came with four quaker chairs whose condition hadn't been described in the listing. I wasn’t bothered about them as I had enough kitchen chairs so when they arrived I wasn’t disappointed to find that they were perilously loose in most of their joints, and on a couple the backs rocked by about an inch and would have come out of the seat given a stout tug. They were also pretty dull and weathered so were consigned to the loft with the long term aim of disassembling and doing a ground up renovation one day. A few years passed and after finding how long Ercol renovation can take on another project I came across a product that offered the possibility of a quick fix.

 

First though some background on Ercol chairs.

 

The original Windsor chair was developed after the second world war as a result of Ercol getting a UK government contract to make utility furniture to replace the stuff that the Luftwaffe had reduced to matchwood during the blitz. The elm seat came about by a combination of coming across a large stockpile of the wood and by seasoning methods that kept the wood from the warping usually associated with Elm, The steamed and bent beeechwood back, spindles and braced legs follow the traditional design of chair-making followed for several centuries. My parents had some of the original utility chairs in the kitchen, they were much more square and sturdy than the later designs and took a real beating without complaint.

 

This no-nonsense design was refined to the much slenderer example which I had to repair.

 

Many Ercol chairs are 30-40 years old now and have withstood 2 generations of rocking children and the slim behinds which wriggled on them back then have mostly reached a new level of lardiness. In addition to these rigours the chairs have also been subjected to central heating and air conditioning shrinking the wood so it is no surprise that some are starting to get a bit creaky. The high backed quaker chairs are the worst in this respect. The length of their back components multiplies any loosening leverage force and stiffness of the structure is less than the lower round backed models. Integrity of the back arch is only partly due to where it is fixed and wedged into the seat (In effect a cantilever). Much of the strength actually comes from the triangulated support from the back spindles The triangles are very slim though and even on a nice tight quaker and you can feel the springiness of structure when you lean back.

 

On my chairs all of the spindles were loose, some could even be twisted, and shaking the arch caused visible movement. Googling around chair repair brought up various sites with the consensus that the chair should be completely knocked apart and all old glue scraped off before reassembly using natural animal glue (no epoxy or synthetics!). Initially I was up for a go experimenting with the worst of the chairs which was fit to fall apart with minimal force but whilst the project was on the back burner though I came across references to Chair Doctor glue.

Chair Doctor claims to find its way into loose joints by capillary action and in addition to glueing  penetrates end grain to expand the wood and lock up loose joints. Despite the looseness of my test chair the individual joins were all quite close fitting and it seemed a bit far fetched for the glue to work as well as advertised. The Pro kit with the larger bottle of glue comes with a hypodermic syringe and some blunt needles and I put about 2ml of glue in ready to "shoot up". Even the finest needle goes nowhere near penetrating the loose joins so I dribbled a ring of glue around joints and flexed the back to try and get as much glue penetration as possible. The instructions claim that joints will start to tighten in minutes and I was surprised to find that this was the case so it's important to work quickly and not try to do too many joints at once. Once this point is reached then put the chair away for 12 hours and don't be tempted to have a trial wiggle before full hardening has occured.

On my test chair I was pleased to find that overnight my loose chair had tightened up considerably. The chair felt springy with only a little telltale creaking from a couple of spindles which needed a second treatment.

So a success then? A qualified yes, very encouraging. Judgement is reserved until a few large friends have been to dinner though!

Even if your Ercol Quaker chairs don't seem loose yet it's worth checking them out for any squeaky spindles by gently flexing and twisting. Because the structural integrity of an aged Quaker chair is starting to get marginal any component not pulling its weight will result in more joints failing until you have a problem. It would seem like good idea to try and fix any squeakers with Chair Doctor as preventative medicine.

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