Sunday Update - Holiday Break

I decided to take a short holiday break for the next couple of weeks. This way I can catch up, take care of the holidays, and not worry about posting to the blog. So thanks for stopping by, and see you next year. Posting should resume after the first of the year. HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

Merry Christmas, Yuletide blessing, blessed winter solstice, happy Kwanzaa, happy Hanukkah, and a joyous Festivus for the Rest of Us. Warm wishes for the holidays !

Whatever you may celebrate , Happy Holidays !

The Sanding Tutorial

I got most of the paint and canvas off the steam trunk with the paint scraper, this will help make it a little bit easier when it comes time to sand our project. In order to avoid gouging the wood with the paint scraper I left the really stubborn canvas and paint to be sanded off later. 

I'm not going to go into great detail here. Sanding wood really isn't rocket science. Simply roll up your sleeves and start sanding. The biggest tip I can give you is to always try and sand with the grain of the wood. This really is the most important part, SAND WITH THE GRAIN OF THE WOOD!  Bold,capital letters, italics, exclamation mark ! If you sand against the grain, you will see the scratches when you try and stain your finished product. Tip number 2 , use a sanding block whenever possible. This gives you a nice even sanded surface and will help avoid putting grooves or waves in the finished product.

With that said, this is how I attacked this part of the project.

I purchased a sanding sponge from the hardware store. I went with a coarse grade sponge. I used the course sponge to get the areas that had a lot of leftover canvas, paint, and glue. Once the sponge lost its coarseness I wrapped it with a medium grade sandpaper and used the sponge as my sanding block.You could also get a small block of wood and use that instead of the sanding sponge.

Now sand the entire trunk down with the medium grade sand paper wrapped around the sanding sponge. Take off all the leftover canvas, paint and glue. Along the edges and by the locking mechanisms, and latches is the only place I went against the grain when needed. Sand as close to the mechanisms as possible, and when the canvas, glue and paint is removed then take your time and sand with the grain to remove any cross scratching you may have created. This is the most important part, anytime you sand against the grain, sand equally with the grain to remove the scratching.

Finally, before you stain the trunk, you want to sand the entire trunk again with a fine sand paper, and then repeat the entire process again with an extra fine sandpaper. Paying special attention to any areas you may have sanded against the grain and any  gouges that may have been created by the paint scraper.

Take your time, be patient, and the extra effort should be rewarding in the finished product.

I spent an additional $9.98 on sanding sponge and sand paper. I'm sure I will be buying more sand paper in the near future. I was short on cash the day I purchased this stuff, so I only bought what I absolutely needed. I still have to buy the fine and extra fine sand paper for finishing. I spent an additional 3.5 hours sanding the front, and will be sanding away throughout the week to try and finish this part of the project up.

Project time for this post : 3 hours 30 minutes
Total time spent on project so far : 19 hours 45 minutes
Total project cost so far : $22.62 USD

Sunday Update On Sunday

Finally a Sunday update posted on Sunday! As usual the holidays are making things a bit hectic, yet I have found time to make some progress on this antique steam trunk. I started sanding the wood and getting the rest of the canvas and paint removed from the steam trunk panels. It really is starting to look better already.

I put in about 3.5 hours this week sanding and that was only the front of the trunk. This week I'll post a tutorial on how I sanded the steam trunk panels. Unfortunately I ran into a bit of bad luck. It seems at one time this steam trunk was severely damaged. There is a crack going right across the front and some severe damage to the middle panel on the left hand side. I circled the damage in the pictures below. Whoever fixed the trunk panel originally used a very ugly black wood filler, I guess this explains the hideous pink paint. However, as I sand the panel it seems they used an excessive amount of wood filler and for the most part this isn't as bad as it seems. What to do about this is another question all together.

I'm going to keep sanding away at it and see if I can make this wood filler as inconspicuous as possible. Then maybe try and cover it with a dark stain. This will help keep the rustic look I'm trying for. If that doesn't work I may try to replace the panel or cover it with some kind of mural on just the center panel. I'm hoping the dark stain solution will work. Here are the pictures.

Most of the canvas and paint stripped from the steam trunk. Next step sand off the excess glue, canvas and left over paint from the steam trunk panels. 

After sanding with most of the paint and canvas completely removed.The purple circle highlights the damage to the center panel, most of the black is wood filler. The black line running between the two trunk straps is also filler. This poses a small problem.

So this coming week, time permitting ,  I am going to try and post a sanding tutorial, remove the inside trunk lining, and remove the damaged trunk handles from the sides of the steam trunk. I'll also try and get all the tutorials posted in the blog as I make progress.

Canvas And Paint Stripped Trunk

I finally got most of the paint and canvas stripped from the trunk. I didn't post a Sunday update this week because there was nothing to update. For the most part nothing got done on the trunk till this morning. I woke up this morning more than a little upset that a whole week had passed and there was no progress to report in the blog. That being my motivation, I decided to spend most of my afternoon stripping trunk canvas.

It's not that I'm being lazy here, but with the holidays approaching things have been a bit hectic. My family has a small retail business, so the holidays are always hectic for everyone. I try to help out with the family business and this sometimes gets in the way of my personal life. I'll do my best over the next few weeks to fit in some trunk restoration time and post the results here. Please be patient.

With that said, I spent about 4 hours stripping paint and canvas on the trunk this afternoon. I left two of the side panels because I'm going to be removing the handles in the next couple days. I figure once the handles are off it will be easier to strip the canvas on the sides. I also left two small panels on the back because I'm not sure if I'm going to paint the hinges on the back of the trunk lid. If I do paint the hinges I think it might be a good idea to leave the canvas on there to protect the wood, but then I might chip the fresh paint when I remove the canvas, so I'm not sure about that right now.

Anyway, here are the pictures of the trunk with most of the canvas stripped off. The scraper put a few small gouges in the trunk wood and I didn't want to gouge the wood anymore so I thought I would try stripping the remainder of the canvas with a medium course sandpaper and then go over it again with a fine sandpaper. The few small gouges should be easy enough to sand out. 

 

Most of the canvas and paint stripped from the trunk. I will go over this with a medium course sandpaper and then a fine course sandpaper. I'll post the results and instructions for that when I start that process.

I left the canvas where the hinges are. I'm not sure whether I'm going to paint the hinges first and remove the paint later or remove the paint and canvas and then paint the hinges. I'll decide on this shortly.

I received the trunk with this broken handle. I didn't remove the canvas from this panel because I felt it would be easier to do once the handles are removed. The other side is the same way.

I'm going to start shopping around for some trunk parts. If I can't find handles I like, I'm going to make them myself from some good strong leather.

Project timd for this post : 4 hours 15 minutes
Total time spent on project so far : 16 hours 15 minutes
Total project cost so far : $12.64 USD

Sunday Update On Monday

I'm going to start posting regular Sunday updates every Sunday. Because of the holiday madness, I am posting the first Sunday update on Monday. The Sunday update will be just a few quick lines on whats  been going on over the week and any progress that has been made on the trunk restoration. So here is the first Sunday update unfortunately brought to you on Monday due to a very busy week.

Not a lot got done over the week. With Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday season starting I focused more on preparing for the holidays then working on the steam trunk. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I started my Christmas shopping, prepared for Thanksgiving and did a little black Friday shopping. I got a great deal on some tools I needed on black friday. I found a plyer set for $9.98. It was a set of 6 and had one special plyer that's good for removing nails. At that price I had to purchase them and it should help in removing some of the trunk nails and a few parts that I have to remove.

This week I plan on catching up and getting the canvas removed from the trunk. This will be my main focus all week. I'll post the results and hopefully have this task accomplished sometime throughout the week. Check back soon for updates and thanks for stopping by "My Old Steam Trunk".

Stripping The Trunk Canvas

Finally, it's time to remove that hideous pink painted canvas. I started this the other day but didn't have  anyone to take pictures, so today I will post a description of how to go about removing the canvas from your trunk restore project.

First I took a razor knife and ran it around the edges of each panel. I tried to slide the razor knife under the trim of the steam trunk without cutting into the trim itself. I used a cheap razor knife I purchased from the dollar store and it seemed to work fine. You could probably use a sharp knife for this but I like the flex of the razor knife. Being flexible, it helped to get into the tight spaces. When using a razor knife try to make sure your other hand is behind the blade, and try to cut away from you so you don't have an accident. Unlike the picture below, I like to live dangerously. I suppose once I take a trip to the emergency room that will cure me of this nasty habit.

Slide the razor knife under the edges of the trunk trim.

After you run the razor knife around the edges of the steam trunk, take a paint scraper and start pulling up the canvas from the trunk. Some of it will come off very easily, other pieces will be much more difficult. Try not to gouge the wood while you do this, and always try and scrape with the grain of the wood.

Try to lift the edges of the canvas and loosen it up a bit.

Going with the grain of the wood start removing the canvas.

The bottom panel came up pretty easily but it looks like there may have been some water damage at one time. This helped to loosen the ugly pink painted canvas. The center panel of the trunk was a little more difficult to remove.

Take a putty knife or paint scraper to the more stubborn parts. Remember to scrape with the grain of the wood, and try be extra careful not to gouge the wood with your scraper

I took a larger putty knife and tried to scrape off the more stubborn canvas. I plan on stripping most of the canvas off with the putty knife, the little bit that's left I'll try and remove with a fine sand paper. When I get to that point I'll post the pictures and add them to this tutorial.

This is how far I got after 1 hour and 45 minutes. I did get all the bottom panels all the way around.

This is how far I got after 1 hour and 45 minutes of scrapping. I'll be doing this throughout the week and post some pix of the end result when the paint and canvas are completely removed.

I'll add the 1 hour 45 minutes it took to do this to the overall project time and also add 1 dollar to the project cost for the razor knife I purchased.  I now have 12 hours and 12 dollars and some change invested into this project.

Project time for this post : 1 hour 45 minutes
Total time spent on project so far : 12 hours
Total project cost so far : $12.64 USD

For some other tips on removing the canvas and paint from a steam trunk, click on the paint removal and canvas removal tags at the bottom of the post.

The History Of Henry Likly And Company

There really isn't a lot of information available on these old steam trunks.My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do some research on Henry Likly and the Henry Likly trunk company.Thanks to google books I found a couple old publications from the late 1800's and early 1900's that were in the public domain. Both books were on the history of Rochester N.Y. and had mini biographies about Henry Likly and his steam trunk enterprise.

Who was Henry Likly ?

Henry Likly was born on January 18th, 1836 in Perth Canada. In the spring of 1848 after his father died he and his mother moved to Rochester N.Y.  He continued his education in the Rochester N.Y. public school system and upon graduation took an apprenticeship with the A.R. & T.H. Pritchard company where he learned the trade of manufacturing trunks and traveling bags.

Henry Likly was married in 1861 to Miss Helen E. Callister. They had two children, William C. Likly born March 31,1867 and Henry Likly born March 12, 1870. Henry Likly Sr. was a registered Republican, Freemason, and member of the Odd Fellows fraternity. Mr. Likly died on December 17, 1897.

The History Of The Henry Likly Trunk Company.

The Henry Likly Trunk Company was established in 1844 as A.R. & T.H. Pritchard. Upon graduating from school Henry Likly took an apprenticeship with A.R & T.H.Pritchard and mastered his trade in the trunk manufacturing industry.In January of 1868 Mr. Likly was given a partnership in the company. The company then became A.R. & T.H. Pritchard & Company, three years later it became A.R. Pritchard & Likly.When Henry Likly and his brother in-law became the sole proprietors of the business the name was changed to Henry Likly & Company. This was the name from 1870 when A.R. Pritchard retired until 1925 when it simply became "Likly's".I couldn't find much more information after that or why the name was changed to just Likly's. As far as I can tell the company was ran by his children after his death in 1897.

In New York State the Henry Likly trunk company was the largest factory of its time. Located at 340 Lyell Ave in Rochester N.Y. the factory covered two acres of land, the building was 4 stories tall and utilized 60,000 square feet of space. During this period it was one of the best equipped manufacturing plants in the United States. The first floor was where the lumber was sawed and prepared, the second floor was the woodworking and box shop where the frames were made, the third floor was designated for trimming and finishing, and the top floor was probably reserved for the executives, sales and accounting. There products were shipped all over the U.S. and even to parts of Europe. For the local residents the Likly company also maintained a retail outlet at 96 State St in Rochester N.Y. 

At its peak the company used over one million feet of lumber annually and turned out over 30,000 trunks yearly. The company produced all kinds of trunks mostly for traveling and packing but they also specialized in theatrical trunks and really fine high end trunks. This guy was the Louis Vuitton of Rochester.

References for this article.

History of Rochester and Monroe County,New York
 William Farly Peck
The Pioneer Publishing Company 1908
Public Domain PDF file http://books.google.com

The industries of the city of Rochester
The Elstner Publishing Co. 1888
Public Domain PDF file http://books.google.com

I also used chacha.com to get the year when Mr.Pritchard retired and the name change to Likly's in 1925.

Your Bloggers Commentary.

When I first began researching this I just wanted to know when the company was established and when it closed so I could get a general idea of how old my trunk was. It's probably safe to assume my steam trunk is over 100 years old. I definitely know it was made between 1847 and 1925.  As I started researching this I got swept away in the nostalga of it all and a real admiration grew for Mr.Henry Likly himself.

I grew up in Buffalo N.Y. about an hour outside of Rochester N.Y.. Researching this I was reminded at just how great these two dying industrial cities had been at one time. Home to steel workers, and craftsman who drank beer from local breweries at corner pubs after a hard days work. The first cities of electricity. The blue collar towns where the residents built great products that were shipped throughout the U.S. and Europe.  A time when people took pride in their craft,learned a trade, and truly climbed the corporate ladder. A time when the American dream was truly alive and well, the streets were paved with gold, and the sky was the limit for anyone who wanted to roll up there sleeves and apply themselves. Mr.Likly obviously did just that !

I don't think you could find a more appropriate story of the American dream then the story of Henry Likly. Here is a guy that moved here from another country, he was raised by a single mom, went to public school, apprenticed in a company learning the business from the ground up, and eventually owning the very company he started at. This is the America of my history books, this is the dream we were all taught about as children growing up, this is what made us a truly great country and why people from all over the world emigrated to this fine land. One hundred years later, the quality products this man created and envisioned are still beautiful works of art worthy of display and reminiscent of a different time in American history.

The time before outsourcing, or importing cheap parts from turd world countries with cheap labor. A time when things were produced localy and people supported each other and their local business's. This was the time when business men cared about their community, and were proud to be employers. This was the vision of the founding fathers and why they fought for this great land.

Do we still have this ? Could Henry Likly succeed today ? Would he of sold out his community for cheap foriegn labor and outsourced jobs ? I wonder what Henry Likly would of been like in today's world ? I'd like to think if Henry Likly were alive today he would somehow be above it all.

Image taken from The industries of the city of Rochester
The Elstner Publishing Co. 1888

Removing Trunk Canvas And Hideous Pink Paint

Started removing the trunk canvas and the hideous pink paint today. I didn't have anyone to take pictures so I will post step by step instructions and the pictures in the next post. Honestly, I really didn't expect this part of the restoration to be so difficult. I spent a little over an hour on this today and didn't even complete one panel. This is going to be a lot of work.

Rear trunk panel with all the canvas and hideous pink paint almost removed. This is 1 hour and 15 minutes of work.

 

The darker parts of the trunk panel is the leftover canvas that still has to be removed. This thing is going to look so much better once the natural wood is exposed.

Small wood gouge in the rear trunk panel. This is why this part of the project is so time consuming. You have to make sure the razor knife or scraper doesn't get away from you. You'll know you are gouging the wood when the bottom of the canvas scraping has a small layer of wood still attached to it. I placed the shaving next to the gouge mark to show you what this looks like.

While stripping the canvas you have to be very careful not to gouge the wood. This part of the project is going to be very time consuming. Anyway, I just wanted to post an update. I'll make sure to post instructions and pictures in the next post.

Project time for this post : 1 hour 15 minutes
Total time spent on project so far : 10 hours 15 minutes
Total project cost so far : $11.64 USD

Polishing Brass Work Completed

The brass work on the trunk is pretty much completed. I say pretty much because I probably could of spent another 8 hours on this and still wouldn't be completely satisfied. However, for the most part I think it came out pretty good. I spent an additional 6.5 hours on completing the brass work. This was accomplished in 4 polishing sessions throughout the week.There is no way I could sit there for 6.5 hours straight doing this.

This is me polishing the trunk brass.

What I thought was brass appears to be brass plated metal on many of the parts. The steel wool did take some of the brass finish off some of the parts.I really don't think there was any way around losing some of the brass finish as the parts were heavily corroded. However the parts now have a shiny, rustic, antique look to them which just adds to the rustic charm of the trunk. I think I'm going to keep this look. I could paint them, or buy some cruddy brush on brass look garbage at the craft store but I think that will take away from the rustic and original look I'm trying to achieve.


The final technique I came up with for polishing the brass was to rub it out with a number 4 coarse steel wool with a dime size drop of brass cleaner on it. After I did all the parts with the number 4 steel wool, I then redid them with a number 0 fine steel wool. When I used the number 0 steel wool I didn't add any brass cleaner and this really got the pieces shining again and added a nice luster to all the parts. They still have some nice antiquing and overall I am very happy with the end result. You can see some before and after pictures in the original post on this subject. Click here for original post.

I have to replace the handles, and the trunk straps, so knowing that I will be removing the fasteners for these parts I didn't spend a lot of time on them. I figure when I take them off, I will buff them out on a machine. These pieces are in really bad shape anyway , I will include some pictures of the trunk parts I remove and how I remove them in another post.

I plan on removing the ugly pink painted canvas this week. I can't wait to get rid of that God forsaken color. I know this trunk is going to look so much better once it's stripped down to its natural wood. I'll post those pictures in the next couple days.

As I posted earlier, I think this is gonna become more of a refurbish job than a restore.This trunk has been severely damaged over the years. The more I work on this thing, the more cracks and blemishes I find in it.

Project time for this post : 6.5 hours
Total time spent on project so far : 9 hours
Total project cost so far : $11.64 USD

Henry Likly Newspaper Ad From 1890

I'm still polishing brass, I've been putting in at least an hour a day. Hopefully by the end of the week the brass work on this trunk will look half way decent.

While I was doing some research into the Henry Likly trunk company, I found this old advertisement from around 1890. I thought it was pretty cool so I posted it here.

I'll be posting more research, and information about the Henry Likly Trunk and Bag Company through out the week for anyone interested. Now I have to get back to polishing some brass.

About The Blogger

I suppose I should introduce myself and tell any interested readers a few things about myself and this blog. Most people call me Richey, some people call me moron and a few other select words we won't use here. Hopefully you'll choose to call me Richey. I'm a single 42 year old male living in Buffalo N.Y. This is the second blog that I've written. The first blog was a humor blog that lasted about 3 years. I won't link to it here as the blog was a bit blunt, crude, and is certain to offend a few people. I really enjoyed writing that blog and had a lot of fun with it over the years yet felt it was time to move on.

I decided to create this blog after I started researching steam trunk restoration. At the time of this writing I didn't find a lot of information out there on this subject. I wanted to start a more serious blog, so I thought why not try a D.I.Y. blog. The steam trunk project seemed like it would not only make an excellent D.I.Y project but also great subject matter for a D.I.Y. blog. Bonus ! Thus the creation of the My Old Steam Trunk blog.

I have no college education and it probably shows in my writing skills. However, I do enjoy writing and hope over the years my writing skills improve through blogging. Although I'm not writing the great American novel, at least I'm writing something. Trying to improve my writing is one of the main reasons I blog. I've considered taking a creative writing course I just have to get off my lazy butt and do it.  Any skill we don't use degrades with time, so blogging helps keep my writing and grammatical skills or lack there of in check.

As you read through my blog entries I'm sure you'll find grammatical errors and the occasional typo or misspelling. I really try to keep it to a minimum though. Thank God for spell check. With this being a D.I.Y. blog the important thing to me and hopefully to you , will be in explaining the different techniques, and ways of restoring one of these old vintage steam trunks. Hopefully a few people surfing the world wide web will find the information here useful.

As far as steam trunk restoration goes, I have no experience. This is my first attempt at this type of project. This could end up being a huge fail or a great learning experience. I plan on taking my time, researching as much as possible, posting the research in the blog, and hopefully helping out a few other people who might be attempting such a project. I'm all thumbs so the good news is, if I can do this, I'm pretty sure just about anyone can.

Other stuff about me. I'm currently between jobs. I'm 42 years old and don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My favorite T.V. show is the Sons Of Anarchy, although I try not to watch much T.V., I'm more of a reader. I use to D.J. dance music for friends and occasionally out at local night clubs. I love house music, and old skool funky breaks. I sold my turntables a few years back but found I missed it so I recently purchased an mp3 controller and mix at home as a hobby. Still mixin the house and breakbeats. When I'm not mixing music, writing this blog, watching The Sons Of Anarchy, or working on the steam trunk, you can usually find me reading. I read a lot. My favorite authors are Ginsberg, Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Crowley, Eliphas Levi, Terence McKenna, and Hunter S. Thompson, just to name a few.  Everything else about me is a bit mundane and I won't bore you with the details.

Thanks for taking an interest in this post, and I hope you find the rest of the information in this blog useful.

Polishing Trunk Brass And Metal Parts

This has to be the most mundane, monotonous, boring task I have ever undertook ! I now have two things I hate in life, cleaning dishes and cleaning brass.  So I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is everyone seems to want brass work on their trunk and that appears to be what I have. The bad news is cleaning extremely corroded, and tarnished brass absolutely sucks for lack of a better word.

So I got about ten minutes and a quarter beer into the project and realized the steel wool I purchased was too fine. I got a zero grade steel wool and that just wasn't cutting through the tarnish, grime and corrosion. I stopped what I was doing, went down to the hardware store and finally spent some money. I purchased some dust masks $2.97, Brasso brass cleaner $3.49, some number 4 steel wool $2.59, and some number 0 steel wool $2.59.

What I used to clean the brass work on the steam trunk.

I returned home, selected some music that would motivate me, some upbeat funky breaks and began attacking the brass work with a ferocious attitude. The process I found most successful was to apply a dime size dollop of brass cleaner to the number 4 steel wool and then rub the heck out of the part. I tried to be as careful as possible not to get the brass cleaner on the leather trim, and ugly pink painted canvas. For this reason I'm glad I decided not to remove it and expose the natural wood. I then took a piece of number 0 steel wool and removed the coarseness of the number 4 steel wool.It's hard to tell from the pictures but it really made a huge difference.

I did this for two and a half hours and although I began to see some results there is still a lot of work to be done. The following are some before and after pictures. Chances are I'm not going to end up with a highly polished mirrored finish on most of these parts, but they will look much better when they are finished. The cleaning did leave some dark discoloration on the canvas which would of ended up on the wood had I not left the canvas in place. Now when I do remove the canvas from the steam trunk I should have some fairly clean natural wood to work with.  

It's tough to get a good picture of the change, but I assure you it is a dramatic difference.

This piece came out the best. I can't believe what a difference this made.

I was tempted to buy a stripping attachment for a power drill  when I was at the hardware store, but was advised against that.The technique that I've described in this post will help protect the wood and leather that the brass parts are attached to.  I do have some skills using a Dremel Tool so I may invest in one to put a nice finish on these parts.

You might be wondering why I just didn't remove all the parts from the trunk and then refinish them ?  I would strongly discourage this. You have to realize most of these steam trunks are over 100 years old. The less parts you remove the less chance you have of breaking something.  The less you bang on these things the better. The goal here is to improve the appearance of the steam trunk and do as little damage as possible. Not to mention if your trying to do a proper restore you want to change as little as possible.

I plan on doing this all week for a couple hours a day. I should be able to get most of the corrosion and dirt off these parts and return them close to there original luster. In the mean time I'll post some information about the trunk, try to find some trunk history on the Henry Likly Steam Trunk Company, and maybe a little information about me. Thanks for stopping by My Old Steam Trunk and I hope you found this post helpful.

Project time for this post 2 hours 30 minutes.
Total time so far 3 hours 45 minutes.
Cost spent on this post : $11.64
Total project cost so far : $11.64

First Some Brass Work

I started removing the ugly pink paint the other night. If you haven't realized yet I'm very excited about getting rid of this hideous color. I know once that ugly pink paint is removed , and the natural wood underneath is revealed, this thing is going to look soooo much better.

As I started stripping the ugly pink paint from the bottom rear panel, I noticed how bad the corner brackets and other metal parts had corroded with time. Now the ugly pink paint was applied over the original canvas on the outside of the trunk. Sad that someone did that, however the good news is that the natural wood underneath is protected by the ugly pink painted canvas. I then thought why would I remove all the ugly pink painted canvas and leave the natural wood exposed while I clean and polish the metal pieces. So after removing the paint covered canvas from the bottom panel the other night I decided to leave the rest and clean and polish the metal work on the trunk today. When I return to removing the paint from the rest of the trunk I will post how I did it with instructions.

I did discover a small crack on the bottom rear panel after removing the canvas. I'll have to figure out what to do about that later. Any suggestions ?

I ran to the store this afternoon, got a couple frozen pizzas for when I get hungry, gulped down an energy drink, got a 12 pack of some decent beer, and plan on polishing and steel wooling the heck out of the brass work and other metal pieces on the trunk. I'll post the details of how I did that and the results in my next blog post.

It only took about 15 minutes to remove the ugly pink painted canvas from the bottom rear panel of the trunk so I'll add that to the project time now. This gives a work hour total of 1 hour and 15 minutes so far. Zero dollars invested.

Clear Some Space !

Before I remove the ugly pink paint, I think I should clear out a work space. While I was cleaning the leather trim I had the trunk on the floor and I realised that I was going to be bending down a lot for this project. I figured I should get the trunk up on something so my lazy butt isn't bending over every 5 minutes. The old spinal cord isn't what it used to be ! This trunk obviously needs a lot of work, I plan on putting in many hours, so I may as well get comfortable.

I reorganized this disaster of a mess, moved the hunting equipment that nobody uses any more onto an old folding table, and cleared off this old work bench which is actually a toy workbench from when I was a child. It is solid wood, has a little shelf underneath it for tools and various doodads and whatnots but it was a bit wobbly. I tightened up the screws, got the wobble out of it and placed the steam trunk on top of it. PERFECTO ! It seems to be the perfect height. This should make life a bit easier !

Suggestion: If your planning on restoring one of these old steam trunks, clear out a nice work space for yourself. Make sure you have plenty of light so you can see what you're doing. Get yourself comfortable, find a place to get your tools organized, make sure the trunk sits at a comfortable height and get ready for some work !

Cost And Time : I'm adding this to project time. It took about 30 minutes making the project time total 1 hour. Cost for a clean, organized workspace 0 dollars but absolutely priceless. Making the total investment in this project 0 bucks. So far I'm getting off pretty cheap Don't worry I suspect I'll be shelling out some cash soon.

Is It Leather Or Steel ?

I started this project last night. I had about an hour to kill before this t.v. show came on , so I decided to go downstairs and play around with the steam trunk. I was inspecting it, wondering where to begin, and assessing the years of abuse and damage that the steam trunk had endured. There's just so much work to be done to this thing.

While looking at a crack in what I thought was metal trim, I realized it was leather. The leather had grown so old and dried out it appears to be almost petrified. It really looked and felt like metal trim. Not knowing where to begin, I decided to give the leather a bit of a treatment and see if I could soften it up a bit.

I should of taken a picture of the crack but will get back to that in another post when we try to actually repair the crack. For now , the task at hand was to apply some leather conditioner to the trim and see if we could soften it up a bit. I had some leather cleaner/conditioner in my shoebox , so I got an old sock put some conditioner on it and started working it into the leather trim. As the dirt came off, the trim lost its black, brassy appearance and began to take on the brown hue of leather again.

I did this for two reasons:

1. I had nothing better to do and what could it hurt.
2. If I worked on the leather trim in this dried out condition it would just crack apart.

So in order to avoid possibility two when it comes time to do some real work on this trim, I gave it a good rub down with some conditioner/cleaner. As you can see from the picture this leather is still going to need a lot of work. I did check the trim in the morning and it does appear to of softened up a bit. This took about 30 minutes and will be worth the time if we can save the trim from cracking apart when its time to work on it.  I will probably do this a couple more times before actually working on the leather trim.

If your restoring one of these and the leather is old and dried out I would suggest doing this. You will need:

1. An old sock
2. A good leather conditioner

Just rub the conditioner into the leather trim of the steam trunk and try to get as close to the edges as possible without getting it into the wood or canvas panels that the trim is attached to. I did this to all the leather parts on the steam trunk. This will save you a big headache down the road.

So far I have 30 minutes invested into this project and because I had the leather conditioner already it cost me nothing. 30 minutes 0 dollars so far.

The next thing I plan on doing is getting rid of that ugly pink paint !

DIY Steam Trunk Restoration

Welcome, this is a blog about, you guessed it,  My Old Steam Trunk. The overall focus of this blog will be about restoring and reconditioning one of these old steam trunks. There will be information about the trunk, how to do restoration, the costs involved, and the amount of time involved in restoring one of these old relics from the past. The above picture is how I found it, dust,rust, dry rot and all.

My old steam trunk has been sitting around this house for several years. There is a bit of history to this steam trunk that I will share in another post.All I'll say for now is that it sat around my house for a very long time.  I was watching a t.v. show and seen one of these finished and thought I could do that.

My first step was to do some internet research to see what was involved in restoring one of these things. I thought for sure I would find a few blogs pertaining to this , I was really surprised to find very limited information on this subject. I found a few websites with restoration tips and helpful info but nothing detailing a step by step process. So I thought what a great blog idea. Thus the birth of the My Old Steam Trunk blog.

The plan here will be to show you my restoration project from day one, itemize the products purchased for the restore, the tools used, finding replacement parts, tallying the costs involved, and logging the amount of time spent on this restoration project.

I plan on posting regular step by step instructions on how I restore and recondition this trunk. This is my second internet blog, and my first attempt at restoring a steam trunk. Hopefully this doesn't turn into the biggest blog fail in the history of the internet. You can watch the project grow from day one, and watch me either royally fudge this up, or create a finished product that I can place in my living room or bedroom. How this ends only time will tell.

Whether your restoring one of these yourself, or just curious how this project turns out, stop back for updates and feel free to leave comments, tips, and ideas.

Thanks for stopping by My Old Steam Trunk.