More on roll top desk restoration

[Yorkshire Sam]

Been watching various videos on roll top desk top videos to try to see how the drawers lock via the roll top, my present restoration has all the drawers but the actual 'mechanism' is missing. There are various rebates where 'something' goes but finding it hard to understand what actually goes there. does any one know how how it all works.. any drawing to demonstrate.. getting really confused at the moment. Any help would be welcome......drawings especially

 

[Hot stuff]

There's a continuous vertical bar running down the back of each set of drawers with an attached hook over the rear of each drawer. When the roll top goes back it pushes the bar down, lifting the hook off the drawer allowing it to open.When you close the roll top it allows the bar to rise via an attached spring dropping the hooks onto the drawer back and preventing them from being pulled out.
Unfortunately I am unable to post photos or drawings due to my technical incompetence but I'd be happy to email you a drawing if you want?

 

[AndyT]

Here's a diagram showing what Hot stuff describes. It's from Bernard Jones - Practical Woodworker. There's a whole 13 page chapter on building one which I could scan if you want, but this is the most useful picture to show what is going on inside.

The text notes that the sliding piece R must be considerably heavier than the other sliding piece S.

Edited to add two more pictures:

 

[Hot stuff]

Same principal except the ones I've got have only one bar and a return spring instead of the set up shown. I think mine are later, utilitarian pieces, mass produced for factories, offices etc.
Thanks Andy, that shows everything much clearer than any drawing I'd have come up with. Think primary school and crayon to get the idea.

 

[custard]

Back of an envelope, but I reckon the piece that Andy posted would have at least 8 cubic feet of primary timber and maybe 4 cubic feet of secondary timber, add in some wastage plus good quality hardware, and the materials alone might cost £1,200.

But the real killer is labour. From a cabinet making perspective there's nothing in that piece that's particularly difficult; but there's just so many individual components and so much joinery that, as a first quality one-off, you'd have to be talking 1,000 to 1,200 hours. If you were all jigged up, or batched them out, you'd still have to be thinking at least 500 to 600 hours (it's got 26 drawers for example, and there's just not that much time you can cut from a first class drawer build). So even under ideal circumstances, for a craftsman built piece, that's at least a £20,000 piece of furniture. Even as a fully production built item, if it was solid timber throughout and half decently made, then I can't see how it could be manufactured for under £6,000.

So when I see similar items struggling to sell at a paltry £275 on Ebay, then I feel like weeping. And imagine how a restorer must feel when someone brings in an item like that and the restorer then has to tell them that even a modest range of repairs and re-finishing will cost maybe ten times the value of the piece!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-FANTASTIC-V ... SwMf1ZpBbC

 

[Yorkshire Sam]

Back of an envelope, but I reckon the piece that Andy posted would have at least 8 cubic feet of primary timber and maybe 4 cubic feet of secondary timber, add in some wastage plus good quality hardware, and the materials alone might cost £1,200.

But the real killer is labour. From a cabinet making perspective there's nothing in that piece that's particularly difficult; but there's just so many individual components and so much joinery that, as a first quality one-off, you'd have to be talking 1,000 to 1,200 hours. If you were all jigged up, or batched them out, you'd still have to be thinking at least 500 to 600 hours (it's got 26 drawers for example, and there's just not that much time you can cut from a first class drawer build). So even under ideal circumstances, for a craftsman built piece, that's at least a £20,000 piece of furniture. Even as a fully production built item, if it was solid timber throughout and half decently made, then I can't see how it could be manufactured for under £6,000.

So when I see similar items struggling to sell at a paltry £275 on Ebay, then I feel like weeping. And imagine how a restorer must feel when someone brings in an item like that and the restorer then has to tell them that even a modest range of repairs and re-finishing will cost maybe ten times the value of the piece!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-FANTASTIC-V ... SwMf1ZpBbC

I have to agree wholeheartedly with this! Although the one I am doing up is in a lot worse condition than this I can appreciate the work that has gone into it. Even for the price I paid for mine if I knocked it apart for the wood ( which is oak) I would still be quids in!
I certainly have no intention of doing so incidently.

 

[Keith 66]

A friend has a roll top desk or what remains of it. It was in a portacabin with a load of other stuff when it was moved by crane. The crane dropped the portacabin through the roof of his barn & needless to say everything inside was smashed to smithereens.
The desk is in mostly large pieces & i think it can be put back together but nobody is going to earn out of it!

 

[Yorkshire Sam]

Here's a diagram showing what Hot stuff describes. It's from Bernard Jones - Practical Woodworker. There's a whole 13 page chapter on building one which I could scan if you want, but this is the most useful picture to show what is going on inside.

The text notes that the sliding piece R must be considerably heavier than the other sliding piece S.

Thanks AndyT that is brilliant, just what I needed, now some of the profiles and cutouts at the back of the drawers makes sense... should be easy enough to make and adapt for mine.

 

[gmgmgm]

The mechanics sound very similar to the locking mechanism on my garage roller cabinet- when the top lid is shut, it locks all of the drawers by pushing a bar down with locking hooks.

 

[thetyreman]

what a nice desk, looking forward to seeing the restored version, shellac would be nice to see on it, reminds me of an organ my dad had when growing up that had a tambour door, I used to love it.