Unstuffing the chair

I thought work would never end yesterday. It finally did around eight thirty at night and I got to spend a whopping fifteen minutes in the shop before I had to get ready for bed. So I started de-stuffing this chair.

I set it up on the bench and pulled out the tufts of material. I set up two bags. One for the horsehair/wood stuffing and one for the cotton batting. After most was out of the bottom I tried to do some fabric removal. Turns out (a lesson I have learned before and forgot) the antique tacks are really stubborn. None of my regular nail pullers worked well. I try not to have lots of specialty tools but I need a tack puller or this will take forever. Some of them are rusty and the heads pooped off so I had to grab them with pliers.

With the fabric removed it became clear that the fabric that wrapped around the stretcher did not originally do so.  More wood was exposed in the original upholstery. You can see the line where the tacks where that became exposed when I removed the fabric. 

Unlike the fabric wrapping down to be tacked as it was when I got the chair here is how the line would have looked using the original tack line. More of the beautiful wood would have been exposed, I think this will improve the lines of the chair as well. 

Here is another view. Had the original lines been used the piece would have had a lighter look than it does. plus the nice finished wood would have been exposed rather than covered up. 

Caster (castor) detail. 

Bag of Cotton Batting. It filled up about half as fast as the stuffing so they are roughly in a 2/1 ratio. 

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On the bench ready for stuffing removal