Unveiling The Mystery Of The Edwardian Purdonium: A Furniture Restoration Adventure! 

Wow cool piece Tim! That quarter sawn oak is beautiful. Also great video, I enjoyed watching! - Jamie

What a little gem. Thank you for sharing your meticulous restoration

I had never heard of such a thing, but what a little beauty. And another view of your lovely garden. Thanks.

The wood grain you revealed is gorgeous.

I love the way you navigate us through your process and restoration. I like the difference tone on the draped wood detail. Absolutely Gorgeous Restoration!

That was a good idea to use the purdonium to hold firewood! It turned out nice!

My Grandfather (as well as several of his sons) were also Coal Miners - In Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. Grandad eventually succumbed to Black Lung.... in 1936. His sons mostly joined the Military in WW2, and stayed out of the mines afterwards. Very interesting and cool piece of Furniture!

What a lovely job and useful addition to your fireplace area. Well done.

I refinished a very old black walnut bonnet top pre civil war chest of drawers that was in many pieces when I found it in my grandparents chicken coop. It had 4 decades of dirt on it to include chicken poop and pigeon poop. This specific chest of drawers has been in my family since before the civil war and it was made entirely of 3/4 inch black walnut with all hand cut dovetails and raised panel backing and rounded feet. It is a real survivor of my family pioneering praire farming days when they lived in a very small log cabin with one bedroom loft. If only old furniture could talk.

Great restoration , nice piece of furniture to store wood in.

My mother had bins like this built into a cabinet with a top for sorting laundry. Very cool piece.

Handsome and useful piece now. I could also see using it as a magazine cabinet by a sofa or comfortable chair.

Sixty years ago, as a child, I lived in a wooden house made of larch logs, about 75 m2. This is the border of the Southern Urals, Kazakhstan and Siberia. This house is still intact, but now it is heated with gas, but in my childhood it was heated with coal, which was used to heat a huge Russian-style stove. If in winter the temperature was below -40C, two large iron buckets of coal were consumed per day. A truckload of coal was needed for the whole year and it was stored in a special coal shed. This box of coal would probably not be enough for a day. But in your warm country, coal was probably consumed much more slowly. I think your Edwardian period is modern? Interesting artifact and excellent restoration.

Wow!! What cool piece of furniture!! Did you even know that you would find that wood grain under all that dirt? The love you used on this really shows!! Thank you for sharing!!

The ray-flecking in the medullary rays of that quarter-sawn oak is spectacular, All of the grain detail is superb. I had never even heard of a Purdonium, and now you have shown me an impressive example. And £5.00! Excellent work, and attention to detail.

Like everyone else, I had never heard of a purdonium until today. The most attractive coal scuttle in South Wales😂

Restored one of these last year for my husband and now I know what it’s called! Beautiful work

The front detail is outstanding, no pun intended 😊

Beautiful restoration. Good idea to put wood in it.

Nice piece of furniture. Nice job restoring it. I understand it's purpose. Must have been a Godsend before there was central heat. Every room having a fireplace and cooking with coal. Nice period piece. 👍

Love the grain in that oak, gorgeoud.

Beautiful wood grain! I wonder if it was a color like that originally but just darkened from being beside a coal fire for so many years.

Great restoration. In keeping with the folded linen theme I'd of probably used it as storage for soiled laundry. Narragansett Bay

My grandmother had a very similarly made cabinet that she used to store potatoes in her kitchen. It wasn't made of nice wood, but it had the same pull out drawer and interior metal bin. I wouldn't be surprised if it had been used for coal once, originally, and she just found another use for it when their house got gas. I always thought it was really cool. This little cabinet was absolutely gorgeous, just beautiful oak and the lovely scrolled carving. What a treasure, and I think you're putting it to good use.

Your narration is lovely, pure poetry @ 11:03, for example!

Beautiful work ❤

Never heard of it but it looks great!!

Well done!

Wonderful job ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Nice job. I like your projects.

My grandparents had one in the sitting room so I actually knew what this was. When their house was actually fitted with central heating in the late 1970’s they just kept it as an interesting objet d’histoire.

What a clever design. The bucket could be filled in the cellar and then be popped into the cabinet, so no pouring of the coal to make dust rise in the house. Coal dust made so much work for our grandmas! Great job, interesting and will be handy for many things.❤ i will remember your trick with the water color masking fluid, thanks for that.

TIL a purdonium is a fancy way to spell "coal scuttle"

Loved the Video. Your Pace is Perfect and Your History is Fun! What a Sweet Beautiful Piece! The Grain is Amazing!

Beautiful work, ❤

What an interesting box.

Looks great! and I learned something today!

They should start making those again for Narrowboaters.

You can get latex masking fluid for Airfix type kits as well, the main difference to the watercolour version seems to be it’s often purple so you can see where you’ve painted it on. It works with acrylic, enamel and lacquer paints, so would also work with your finishes should anyone have trouble getting the watercolour version.

Looks great! great video!

what ever your previous experience with wood staining was, I can match it…with food colouring. Took me a fortnight to get it to fade even with so much washing that my skin was suffering. But I accidentally came across a fix (though wearing gloves is the best) After a couple of good washes, cover the areas of the stain on the skin with a cheap water based PVA glue. Let it dry and the rub hands together to start lifting the glue. As the glue peels off it takes the deep stain with it. A warm soapy wash to remove the last of the glue and job done.

That linenfold! Gorgeous gorgeous!

Beautiful restoration of a nice piece of fire side furniture. Great video.

Nice piece and a skillful job bringing it back to life. Thank you for the video. You are in Wales? Someday I'll make it there. My grampa told me we came from Wales in the very early 1600's. Something to do with being at odds with the church, Greetings from Seattle Wa USA. Thanks again

Beautiful

Now I know what a purdonium is!

You would think that the seller would have cleaned it out before selling it. 😢😢 Nice job restoring it.😊😊

Boxes like that were also used for storing flour.

Cover when stripping with clear wrap, it works faster

would make a unique trash binfor ur office

A handy invention to keep the mess of coal in the cellars where it belongs. Filling scuttles was a dirty job.

It's a pretty and useful piece Art Deco era?

That's lovely! Can you give a list of the products you used. Thanks.

I can’t help but think it would be great for storing socks…or potatoes

Its for storing coal beside the fireplace.

I thought it was a place men pissed in when dining or gambling and not wanting to leave the room. Although they are usually in a grand sideboard!

I thought it was for potatoes!

Nice job but why didn’t you do the bottom, the back and the inside??

What is the brand name of the water color masking you used. Thanks. New subscriber.

👍👍

I see you're using steel wool together with the paint stripper. I once did this with a German stripper gel. The outcome was horrible as the abrasion particles of the wool reacted chemically with the stripper and left loads of unremovable black dots on the ash veneer. My question is how you avoid that? Maybe your stripper is of different recipe in the UK? Which one? Thanks

Great result, what shade of toner did you use please.