JED: My name’s Ged.
I'm a classic car wood restorer living in Crewe.
I would say there's about four or five of us who actually do it in this country.
Daniel, my son, he works with us.
He now is fully trained and he knows how to do the job and what more could you ask?
Father and son working together.
Today we're going to restore a clock binnacle from a Jaguar Mark 2 car.
We're looking at the condition of the pieces of wood that's arrived.
We then take it to pieces and then reglue it
and then we use a chisel to remove any loose veneer.
When Daniel’s chiselling he has to be careful that he’s only removing the loose veneer
and not that he's digging into the actual plywood.
Veneer that is still stuck to the substrate would then need to be sanded by myself.
I have to be careful that I don't round off any edges
as the veneer has to stick to a straight edge.
The veneers that we use for the Jaguar Mark 2 is an American burl walnut and an African teak.
The bundles of veneer come in 24 sheets.
If you do make a mistake, once you run out of that veneer you'll never get the same veneer again.
The grain all has to go in the same direction and,
where we joint it, it has to match the same colour, the same grain.
We have to glue the veneer and stick it to the substrate before we put it into the press.
The vacuum press is to suck the air out and hold the veneer in
place while the heat activates the glue and bonds it to the substrate.
We need four to five presses to be able to bond the veneer.
The temperature has to get up to 120 degrees to 150 degrees to make the flexible back
shape and form around the object.
What I'm doing now is removing all the sharp edges of veneer.
Daniel is painting all the edges to actually seal
the end grain of the plywood to stop any moisture getting in.
We’re sanding the veneer very lightly with a 180 sanding disc ready for that veneer to be stained.
At any stage we can get right to the end and if the veneer rubs through or the lacquer rubs
through then it has to go back to square one and start from the very beginning.
Daniel is mixing the primer.
That seals the veneer and allows the actual lacquer later to stick to it.
We have to actually give the woodwork two coats of this primer.
After the lacquer is cured, then what we do is we then start the sanding process of the lacquer.
This machine is a polishing machine that we've made ourselves.
The hard mop will take them scratches out.
When we put it over to the soft mop,
that then buffs it and it's the static that generates the shine.
We've been doing this now for about eight years on our own and we have done jobs for royalty.
We use the best to hopefully be the best.