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Do you like spending a lot of time and money to make old stuff look better? Then why not share here. I don't have a huge amount of restoration experience but my husband and I recently restored the wooden case of an old valve radio and I have just started a big project to restore an old German Christmas pyramid so I figured starting a thread to document my new project and hopefully also see some projects and share tips with others doing this kind of thing would be fun. What's a German Christmas pyramid you say? Do a GIS for Weihnachtspyramide and you'll get a good overview pretty quickly. This type of decoration is used the area of Germany in which I grew up in the weeks prior to Christmas and replaced with a tree come Christmas eve. They come in all shapes and sizes (from 10cm to city-square sized) and most of them are wood carved, though older metal models also exist. Everyone where I grew up has one - most people have one big one (3 layers plus) and a few small ones for dining/coffee tables. They have either forest/nature scenes or Nativity type motives/figurines and they turn from the heat of the candles attached to them. In my case it's one of these:   and it's been in my family for some time, having been bought either by dad's grandparents or parents (noone quite recalls). My parents and I took it with us when we moved from Germany to New Zealand and since this kind of thing isn't very common down here I figured it would be nice to do it up. I also did most of the damage to it and the figurines when I was a kid so it only seems right. The pyramid stands about 1.3m (4 foot) tall and as you can see from the picture it's 7 'stories' high with 5 of these holding a total of about 40 figurines. The very top storey has a set of 3 bells which bing-bong attractively when the pyramid turns (and which thankfully can be turned off). The top consist of 10 blades/wings which can be adjusted to catch the heat of the candles to turn the thing. The turning mechanism works via a needle/thin nail which is stuck in bottom of the central shaft and which rotates on a small glass plate. A max of 15 candles (3 per level) can be attached but usually not all are needed to actually drive the pyramid. It's been in not very good storage for about 10 years or so but it was already pretty old and not hugely well looked after before then. Someone has obviously previously had a go at painting over some of the main sections but much of the newer layer of paint has come off and in some places paint is worn down to the wood, especially where wax was repeatedly scraped off. The plan is to repaint the main structure and to repair the parts of it which are not in good shape (e.g. some of the little rails along the side are broken) and also to restore and touch up the figures. I don't really want it to look all shiny and new but I also want it to look nice (i.e. I am not concerned about "preserving value for resale" through retaining original paint etc as I want to use it and keep it not flog off to someone). Overall step one however is to get it all cleaned up before making any decisions re sanding/painting or whatever. I spent some time mulling over whether or not to take it apart but when I started cleaning it quickly became apparent that this would be the best move. I took out the inside (rotating) piece which is in one piece. And decided to start on the main frame parts first. Round one: fill 7 zip-lock bags full of nice clean railing pieces:  Most of these came out of their little holes intact which is great but a few of them broke off (or had already broken off) their wooden pins. I suspect these pins will be easy enough to replace further down the track. Pretty much the entire wooden structure is painted in this thick yellow-white paint with feature pieces in a matte gold type colour. Both are going to be a pain to match. Also cleaning these fiddly things, many of which were coated in dripped down wax was a lovely job. After this the frame looked something like this:  As you might be able to see I then tried cleaning this without further disassembly (see level 2) but this wasn't working too well either and the stands separating the levels came out relatively easily while cleaning anyway. I assume by how the wooden pins look that these were glued in once upon a time but the glue is no longer doing much of anything. Here's the bottom level waiting for someone to clean it:  It's both grimy and most of the outer areas are coated in wax - ranging from lightly to heavily splattered. In comparison the pillars are positively sparkling. Thankfully the pieces cleaned up a lot nicer than I thought they might. I am taking my time to make sure I get all the wax off and do this part properly as a good clean base will give me a much better starting point for everything following on. Regardless of whether I'll sand back fully or just rough up and repaint I will need to sand these parts and any wax I've missed will seriously come to bite me in the arse when sanding so I'm working hard on not missing any.   Product wise I am using hot water and a product called "De-Solve-It" which is a citrus based cleaner designed for grease and stain removal. It's pretty non-aggressive but also effective and the citrus smell is quite pleasant. The white paint is pretty wipe-able which is good and makes it easy to clean but the gold paint is not and I have to be careful that it doesn't soak up moisture into the wood so it makes those bits extra fun to clean. I am not thinking that it'll be ready for Christmas season this year (since this means I'd have less than 4 weeks) but I definitely would like it all done for Christmas 2016. I would say that getting the structure all done will about 1/3 of the work and doing the figures will be about 2/3. I'll take some pictures of what they are like soon to give an idea of that side of the job. So there's the start of my stuff but I like reading about other people's projects and I'm sure there's plenty of goons working on restoring things that don't really fit neatly into any of the other threads, so please share your projects and maybe we can help keep each other working on them. Dori fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 01:03
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| # ? May 5, 2024 10:16 |
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So it took longer than expected but I finally managed to finish scrubbing and scraping all the wax & dirt of all the pieces and start sanding. The sanding is about as much fun and quick as it sounds but I am really pleased with how nice the first couple of pieces I've finished have come up. I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with different sanding options and in the end my trusty "variable speed mini rotary tool" - i.e. dremel - has proven to be the best and quickest for the fiddly little pieces which I figured I'd start with and move on to the easier big flat pieces later. In just under two hours I did....  two of them ... but I also spent the experimenting time and I'm not sure how long that took. There's 36 of these  so I hope they won't take an hour each and that I'll just get faster and better at it. I also need to do some thinking on what to do with the central, turning part of the pyramid. The bottom two disks are quite badly warped. This might partially explain why it wasn't running smoothly before I took it apart but I am not sure if that's the key reason (the pin is also pretty dull and the glass is scratched). I guess I could try making new disks myself but I really worry that unless I get them perfectly round I'd get balance issues which will also result in poor performance. I am also not sure where I'd go to get them made or if there even is a machine for cutting perfectly round shapes to a specific diameter (I assume there must be). Well I have plenty of time to work this out while I sand and sand and sand some more but if anyone has good advice on this that'd be super helpful.
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Dec 2, 2015 10:20
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