Thanks for your past help. The project is coming along well but slowly. Heat gunning the ceiling paint is a killer.

Much to my and everyone's surprise the doors from the passenger compartment to the vestibules are mahogany. The car was built in 1922 by the Pullman Company (that was the correct name in 1922). The doors are so heavy that I thought, as we struggled to get the first one out of the car, that they were metal.

Anyhow under many layers of paint is a maroon varnish which must have been the original color. The wood is beautiful and not stained. The doors have the expected dings.

I'd prefer to go something better than the Mimwax route. So:

With what do I fill the bad dings, prepare the carefully sanded wood, and varnish it?

The doors have two window sashes. The upper slid down next to the bottom to open. At some point someone screwed everything together and removed the hardware. Anybody have pictures of what the windows should look like?

It's nice to find 90-year old mahogany. Sort of a George's Christmas present to this museum.

Marty,

I've had some luck using a steam iron and wet towels to essentially "steam" dents and dings out of wood. Take your time, don't try to do do much at once, and you may be able to "raise" some of the dings out.

Check a Car Builders Cyclopedia on the end door window design. This was a fairly common design for car end doors on heavyweights of the era.

David

Agreed - no filler will not obscure the grain. I'd try to clean the original varnish in place rather than remove and replace it. Dings are part of the history...as are the alterations to the original window hardware in the air conditioned era. Unless you are planning to return the car to open window configuration, the alterations are part of the era you plan to present.

Sounds to me like there's no set plan and specification for what the car will be when it's done and the job is being made up in progress with no specific goal in mind. Most of this research and decision making process needs to be done before the first bit of old is scraped away.......but it's never too late to start.

Do you know what changes were made when and why, and to which era you want to restore it?

dave

Are you sure those doors were ever varnished? Just because they are mahogany does not mean they were not originally painted. They used to use mahogany because it is dimensionally stable and rot-resistant, not just because it is a pretty wood.

So you might want to look around for some builder's photos or something before you assume they were varnished.

It is tempting to varnish every piece of mahogany you find...but it might not be the right thing to do. If you stripped carefully you should have found the original car numbers on top of paint (or varnish) then that should give you a clue.

My assumption is that the car would have been painted on the outside and "maybe" varnished on the inside, but more likely painted both inside and out.

And as somebody else has pointed out, to make your modernized car restoration make sense it might make more sense to paint it (as hard as that is to do). You need to think through these actions very carefully before taking actions.

Did you attempt to "save" the remains of the original car numbers? Even of they are rough they may be worth stripping around and preserving...those were painted on by real craftsmen and not easy to duplicate. They tell a story all their own.

T7

Thanks for your helpful comments. To respond to some of you observations:

The car is for the train ("needed soon for the train", words I'm sure many of you have heard before). It clearly won't be a museum piece but will be as authentic as possible. We are not just going to paint over everything as somebody once (or twice) did. We are going down to bare surfaces where ever possible. But we are not going to put the clerestory windows back or pull out the "new" clerestory ceiling. I think we have a pretty good grip on the modifications to the car over its life. It even was a gift shop for awhile but was never off its trucks until trucked to the Museum.

The original number of the car is stamped on the doors and door window frames. Maybe we will find them on the side of the car.

The the first layer of "paint" of many layers of paint on the doors must be a varnish because you can see the grain through it and the heat gun makes it sticky as opposed to the paint which peels off nicely. There is no way to save the varnish.

Some of the dings are so bad that wood was lost. Plus the are screw and bolt holes in the doors. So I have to fill. I know that will leave voids in the grain. But when we tell passengers they are looking at 90 year-old (50 pound? -- I haven't weighed them) mahogany doors they will forgive the imperfections. People understand antiques and mahogany even if they don't appreciate the coach itself. Painting them make them uninteresting everyday doors.

Thus my original questions still remain. What to fill with? How to prepare surface and varnish it and with what.

Again, thank you for your observations so far. I'll try steaming out the minor dings.

I have had success in filling and matching mahogany in furniture by creating "sawdust" by sanding an area that could stand it. Then mix the dust with a clear glue like Duco Cement and use that as a filler. You get a good color match, but obviously create no grain.

Bill

I don't know what to tell you. I find people don't find my advice to be within their comfort zone, so why bother sharing.

So I won't write you a book. I'll send you to one. This should be on your museum's bookshelf and every painter should read it. Nigel Clegg's book "How to paint your boat", which is not a how-to and not about boats. It's a primer for paint. Pun intended :)

"brightwork" = varnished wood

Re varnish, it has come a long way. http://www.awlgrip.com/support-and-advi ... twork.aspx
Don't use a spar varnish. That's for spars. Its useful properties came at the cost of others. That's a bad trade for our application.

Helps to source from other than the local lumberyard. Yes it's a PITA.

Re Amazon links, http://cmp.ly/5

OK, if you have no interest in authenticity, anything goes. Who cares if the doors don't match the era of the remaining fabric of your air conditioned car?

You can find professional furniture and cabinet restoration products that will do a very nice job on the wood repairs. It is not commonly available through home store retailers or in small quantities. Minwax type products could be plenty good enough for your purposes. Abatron WoodEpox is certainly capable of not only patching your doors, but casting a new door if you can make a mold. You can't go far wrong using decent quality stuff properly according to the directions. You might even find somebody in old house restoration through The Historic Salisbury Foundation capable of painting on the grain in the repaired areas.

There are products out there that will soften the old varnish and let the dirt rise to the top to be removed, saving the old stain and patina to be covered with a clear coat of matching varnish. This is real museum conservation technology. Dangerous precedent to set.....it could lead to high standards.

It's been decades since I worked for HSF, so I don't know who is there any more. I'd encourage you to find out who they use for similar projects and find out about locally available products and sources. Ed Clement did sweat the historic details so there's a history of high quality work done by their contractors to draw from.

dave

If you want to know the original interior finish on the 1922 Pullman heavyweight, why don't you just contact us at the IRM Pullman Library? For a modest cost you would get the specification and drawing list for the original order. We would need to know the original car number or lot number under all that paint to match it up to the correct lot number. Note that the complete specifications and drawing lists in our files go back to 1903; we have limited information before that date plus floor and elevation plans back to the early days of Pullman Car Works. More information about the Pullman Library is available on the Illinois Railway Museum's web site.
Sincerely, Ted Anderson, IRM Pullman Library curator

Marty-

Our carshop just up the road from you in Newton, NC has the benefit of being run by a cabinet maker with 60+ years of experience.

He recommends you go with a kit from Mohawk...

http://www.mohawk-finishing.com/catalog ... ?ictNbr=14

They have fillers, background markers, etc... everything you need to match or resemble the grain you are looking to repair.

Hope this helps,

Matt Bumgarner
www.newtondepot.com

I have the Mohawk kit, obtained from taking the course. I highly recommend contacting Mohawk Paints to see if there is a course being offered in your area. They do only a few courses each year. In two days you get hands on how to use the tools. They also have a video of the course that will be a substitute, or at least get you started. The trick is to learn how to do things like understand the difference between modern finshes that are virtually impossible to change, how to use dry brush to blend the areas, understanding depth of the finish to avoid that flat appearance at oblique angle, the different types of stain versus pigment - so much to make an authentic appearance. When done it's not all that hard, once you experiment. The kit comes as part of the course, but get it if you can't attend! Highly recommended, plus some of their special antique restoration spray items. The course was recommended to me by master car restorer Glen Guerra. After the course, I retouched a dry sink at home the bottom of which had been chewed by a dog and the sides dinged. At the museum, I used a red stain in alcohol base to add to the Mohawk door - window varnish to get the appropriate color of mahogany seat arm rests after stripping away all the layers of paint and underlying, tinted shellac (Be careful, most likely it is red mercuric oxide tint). The course helped to understand the challenges!
Sincerely, Ted Anderson

Correction to my post. As I vaguely recall, wood filler is needed for the open grain mahogany to get a smooth final finish. I used the red dye in alcohol base, added to a water based wood filler to get the appropriate shade and avoid that blotchy appearance. Then sanded down to the final smooth finish. I used the door and window varnish because it contains both long and short oils. A spar varnish (long oils) tends to be sticky in humid weather and picks up dirt (so I am told). A bowling alley varnish (short oils) though very hard is not flexible and does not handle wide temperature fluctuations. So the door and window varnish was chosen to hold up in an unheated pole barn in the Illinois weather. But it is up to you what you prefer and what the paint salesman tells you. Wish I could tell you more but I am a rank amateur and my memory fails me after ten years.
Ted Anderson

Hi Marty
without seeing the door its hard to tell you what to do. If I were to do the repairs I would use Bondo to fill the dents. As you know that would not take stain, but thats OK as after the first coat of varnish was laid down I would hand paint over the Bondo to match the rest of the wood. Then I would build two or three more coats of varnish. Make sure each coat is dry before sanding with 320 grit
paper.

The hand painting is done with powered pigment mixed with shellac
ordered from Monarch.
Good luck
Dave

Marty
As you can see there are a number of ways to restore the door.
the all are correct.
One thing I left out, when you fill the dents mask off the surrounding wood as the bondo will fill the grain and you will have
a bigger mess to clean up. I would use 2" wide blue tape cut out your mask to match the dent.

The best way to do this restoration is to load the door in your van and bring it out Orange Empire. We will get it done quick time.
Just kidding.
Dave

Depending on the severity of the "dings" and whether they weaken the fabric of the original door, is it a good idea to try and remedy them? The damage does tell a story of the car's service life, to a degree. Just another angle to consider.