A lot of Hard Work

This is a photo of the interior coved top rail of the top laying next to the original. There wasn't much left of the original after seventy-five years of termites, and moisture damage.

In this photo you can see that we used the original parts to help in lining up the mortises for the top ribs.

This is the front part of the interior coved top rail. It had to be hand done, because the cove comes to an end at the front, and because it is also angled from the rest of the top rail as it returns to the windsheild. It also has a finger joint where it attaches to the rest of the top rail. The rest of the top rail was coved with a Williams and Hussey molder machine.

I used a Clifton 2" convex spoke shave to cove the front part of the top rail.

In the beginning of this project there were a lot of obstacles such as parts that had been eaten away by termites. Trying to match these parts was a bit problematic as you can see by some of these photos. You can see that I was able to use these parts to line up the mortises, but I did have to use some archive photos to try and match the parts.

To be sure, there was a lot of hand work on this project.