Welcome to The Repair Shop,
where cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life.
Anything can happen - this is the workshop of dreams.
Home to furniture restorer Jay Blades.
Nowadays, things are not built to last,
so we've become part of this throwaway culture.
It's all about preserving and restoring.
We bring the old back to new.
Working alongside Jay will be some of the country's leading
crafts people...
I like making things with my hands.
I love to see how things work and I want to know how things work.
Whether it's a Rembrandt or somebody's family piece,
every painting deserves the same.
..each bringing their own unique set of skills.
You're about to witness some magic.
They will resurrect...
- ..revive... - Oh, yes.
..and rejuvenate...
treasured possessions and irreplaceable pieces
of family history...
Oh, my goodness me, it looks like it's new!
..bringing both the objects...
Oh!
- Oh, wow! - ..and the memories that they hold...
back to life.
Oh, thank you!
In The Repair Shop today,
accordion expert Roger Thomas wrestles with an instrument
that survived the Blitz, but now sounds like a strangled cat.
DISCORDANT SQUEAKING
I have to be very careful not to cause any damage because
if I snap that off, then I'm going to be in trouble.
While furniture restorer Will Kirk
performs some emergency surgery on a 50-year-old fish.
This was probably carved by one of Fletcher Christian's descendants.
But first, something to test the skills of furniture restorer
Jay Blades and clockmaker Steve Fletcher -
a treasured family piece belonging to Jane Fanner.
- What have we got here, then? - Something that, to me, is very,
very special because it was made by my dad.
- It feels like Christmas time. - Unwrapping a present. - Wow.
- And there we are. - So, your father made this clock?
All of the clock, yes.
- Wow. - One of the things that you need to know is my father was totally
blind, I mean, he couldn't even tell the difference between day and night.
Seriously?
Dad and I were very close.
He was born with something called retina pigmentosis and gradually
the eyesight got narrower and narrower and narrower.
By the time he met my mother,
he was able to see only a minuscule amount and he'd lost his sight
completely after that.
I absolutely love this clock.
It always chimed all the time he was alive, and then, just after he died,
it stopped chiming, it stopped working, and it needs mending.
Well, I've never seen anything like it in my life.
I can see and hear that it's got nine gong rods,
which means that it plays Whittington chimes.
I can't remember the exact tune,
but I can tell you it sort of trills,
it's an incredibly pretty little... ble-blible-blibble...
- sort of tune. - Wow, really? - Yeah.
I'm just looking at the door that goes on there.
I was just trying to figure it out, how he made that by feeling there.
That in itself is just, like, amazing.
- It's incredible. - Sound mattered so much to him...
- Yeah. - ..that I really want to hear the chime working more than anything.
I don't even mind if it doesn't keep good time...
- It's just the chime. - ..but I'd love to hear those chimes again.
- We'll do him proud, we'll do your dad proud. - Oh, I'm so thrilled.
- All right, you take care now. - Bye-bye, now.
Now, that's blown me away, now. That just made me, like, wow.
I'm actually thrilled and excited, but also missing Dad more than ever.
Now it's down to Jay,
Steve and The Repair Shop team to get this treasured timepiece
ticking and chiming again.
What I think I'll be able to do is revitalise the actual case.
So not taking away any of the integrity,
but making sure it just shines.
It's looking a bit tired at the moment, isn't it?
- It does look a little bit tired. - Yeah.
I think the main challenge is going to be just making sure
we get the movement working OK.
So, I'll strip down the whole clock, right down to every single screw.
- Seriously? - Yeah, yep, yep. - So, you're not going to lose any screws,
you'll take them all apart and then be able to put it back
- together again? - Yeah, yeah, every single part.
Right, I've taken the mechanism out.
So, it's like a piece of furniture now.
Cool, so I can have my wicked way with it?
- You can have your wicked way with it. - Thank you, sir. - Yeah.
- Kirsten. - Steve.
I wonder whether you can do a little job for me...?
Steve is also calling on the skills of Repair Shop ceramics expert
Kirsten Ramsay to help give the face a well-needed makeover.
I've got this dial here that I think we could improve by painting
- the numerals black. - OK.
That leaves Steve with the main
challenge of getting the chimes sounding.
The hammers that hit the gong rods are powered by the clock mechanism,
which hasn't worked since Jane's father's death.
So, to fix the chimes,
Steve's going to have to first mend the whole clock mechanism.
The main problem is in the bearings, these holes here.
Even more tough than that is that some of the teeth are slightly worn.
So the main challenge is going to be to get the chimes sounding
as Jane would have remembered them, and...
..that's going to be quite interesting.
From tired treasures that just want some TLC to mouldering Old Masters
in need of a full MOT,
The Repair Shop team takes on labours of love
that have lain unfixed and forlorn for years.
Will, here you go, there's one for you.
Faye, what's in the box?
It's...
a flying fish.
Wow!
This family pet was plucked from a remote corner of the Pacific
by Faye Lambert's parents nearly 60 years ago.
He needs a little help from furniture restorer Will
- to bring him out of retirement. - You can see what's happened.
- Oh, no! - Its tail, it's snapped off, unfortunately.
Aw! Um, you don't happen to have...?
I'm sure that you would have brought it with you if you did have...
- I'm afraid that's long gone. - Right.
It was bought on our way back from Australia and I remember my mother
coming down, waking my sister and me up, and saying, "Come up on deck,
"cos something quite exciting's happening,"
and the islanders were rowing out in their canoes from Pitcairn Island,
and they were selling their wares.
- Wow. - I don't know if you've heard of Mutiny on the Bounty?
- Yes. - But this was probably carved
by one of Fletcher Christian's descendants.
The crew who mutinied on HMS Bounty in 1789 in the South Pacific
settled on Pitcairn Island.
Their descendants live there to this day.
And carved flying fish like Faye's
- can fetch up to £200 in good condition. - Steve?
- Yeah. - You haven't got a pair of callipers?
Will's toughest test will be to make a seamless repair without the
original piece of tail that's broken off,
as it was carved from a tree that grows on the other side of the world,
thousands of miles from The Repair Shop.
So, I've managed to find some wood
that has a very similar colour and grain to the fish and, hopefully,
I might have enough width on that
to make up the missing part of the tail.
So, what I'm looking for here...
I mean, I have an overall decent colour match,
but it'd be quite nice to get a similar grain pattern.
Excuse the licking.
If you look here, we've also got a bit of figure and a bit of grain going
on in the wood there, so I think, if I can get the angle right,
I could probably have, like,
a decent colour match and also a match for the pattern as well.
It's weird to think that the last person working on this fish
would have been one of the islanders.
It's actually quite an honour, really.
Meanwhile, third-generation clockmaker Steve has reached a critical point
in getting Jane's clock working again.
It's bath time.
So, I'm just cleaning up these barrels now.
We use old-fashioned clock cleaning fluid
and then I scrub them up in normal washing-up liquid.
This is the way that we've been cleaning clocks forever
and my grandfather used to clean them in exactly the same way.
I'm just using a water-based paint with pigments and just flooding that
into these areas, but it's quite painstaking and quite fiddly,
hence the magnifying glass.
I just find when I'm doing really sort of fiddly painting,
really close up, you sort of tend not to breathe, you hold your breath
so that you get a completely sort of straight line.
So, yeah, not much chatting while I get on with this.
- Jay? - Yeah?
You look better with your mask on.
That's what the missus tells me!
With the hundreds of individual parts washed and clean,
Steve must now put the clock back together again before he can fix the
chimes and find out exactly what they sound like.
- How we doing, Steve? - I'm just putting some new springs into two of the barrels.
What, that's going in one of them?
Yep, and then the barrels go into the clock.
So, Steve, do we know anything more about the Whittington chimes, then?
Any history about that?
Yeah, they're based on the chimes of St Mary's church at Bow.
- So, the Bow bells. - Bow bells, yeah.
- East London. All right. - And they're called Whittington because they're
based on a story about Richard Whittington, the Mayor of London...
- Yeah. - ..when he was a lad and he was Dick Whittington.
- Oh! - And they've just been called Whittington chimes.
So, Steve, when will we hear the chimes the same way that Jane remembers them?
I'm almost there on the movement. I know it doesn't look it,
but I'm on the home straight at the moment.
- Really? - This is the easier part, actually.
Did you just say this is the easy part?
- Yeah. - It doesn't look easy at all.
How many pieces have you got here that goes into this clock?
Just in this unit alone, I suppose there's, um, 100 pieces.
- Wow. - And the rest of the clock...
I suppose another 150 pieces.
But hold on, I do see a washer there. What's going on there?
No, no, no, no, that was an extra washer.
- You sure? - Don't point that out.
You know what? Funnily enough...
You had lost a washer?
I had lost a washer, so I took a washer out of my washer drawer,
- put it in and then I found the other washer. - The washer.
See, it does happen.
So now you've got to just put it all together.
Yep, I'm just putting it all together now.
So I'd best go and crack on with the case, shouldn't I?
- Have you not done it yet? - Well, I'll see you in a minute, um...
- I'm gone! - Good.
- Right. - How are you doing?
The young lady you need to see is Kirsten just over there.
The Repair Shop experts have countless years of experience at rescuing
cherished possessions from languishing broken in the country's attics and cellars.
What have you got there? That looks nice. Hello.
- So, what's this? - This was my mother's accordion.
- Oh, wow. - But she has given it to my daughter now.
Next to arrive in need of some Repair Shop TLC,
the Brierley family have something to test the musical talents
of accordion expert Roger Thomas.
Cos Sarah's the musician of the family.
Oh, so you can play this, Sarah?
Well, I would like to.
- It was my mum's... - Right. - ..who is now 94.
- And do you know when she got this one? - When she was 17,
she came home with her first week's wages and her mum went
and put it down as a deposit for them to buy this,
so it was actually brand-new when they bought it.
- So I'm just trying to do the maths. So, how old...? - So, she's 94,
- so it's just under 80 years old, isn't it? - OK.
Roger is one of just a handful of specialist accordion restorers in the UK.
But can he get this antique instrument playing sweet music once more?
HE PLAYS A NOTE I can hear that really high note.
- Yeah. - Cos it shouldn't make that really high-pitched noise, should it?
No, no, it's very annoying, actually.
Because you can't actually play it, either.
SQUEAKING
- Yeah, it's like a cat, isn't it? - Yeah.
That doesn't sound right, either.
- No. OK. - These keys that are popping up,
they look like they're kind of broken.
- You can deal with that, can't you? - Yeah. It's a beautiful instrument, isn't it?
- Yeah. - But the story about the accordion
is my mum used to play it during the war,
- during the Blitz... - Oh, wow. - ..in the shelters.
- Really? - So they used to go, obviously,
underground and play to keep people's spirits up.
So where does she think this is? Does she know this is here today?
- She doesn't know. - She doesn't know anything about it.
She doesn't know anything about it.
- Seriously? - Yeah. - And, in fact, last time she saw Sarah, she said,
"How are you getting on with my accordion?"
Sarah then says... "Ask Dad."
- Just pass the buck! - She knows it's broken and she's been nagging
for a couple of years now for me to get it done.
So, what would this mean to Mum to actually get this repaired, then?
- Oh, she'd... - She'd be really pleased, wouldn't she?
Yeah. I think really she'd like me to be able to play it.
- So it's going to mean a lot to her. - It's going to mean a lot.
So, hopefully, by the time -
not hopefully - by the time you come back... I know,
- you looked at me funny then. - Yeah, yeah, yes, the "hopefully", yeah!
Definitely, by the time you come back,
it will not sound like a strangled cat.
- It will if I play it. - Yeah, if you play it, or me, as well,
but it's definitely going to sound good.
Thank you very much, nice to meet you.
- You take care now. All right? - Bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
- Well, that's a nice story. - Yeah, it is.
Hm. I've got to adjust the levers inside here...
There's always a little bit of risk there,
so I've got to be very careful I don't break anything, that's the kind of first challenge.
OK. So, what should a working accordion sound like anyway?
Well, I can't actually play this one right now, but I've got...
Why don't we go over to the bench...
- OK. - I've got a little... A little melodeon over there that I can just give
- you a rough idea of what it ought to sound like. - All right.
- HE PLAYS A TUNE - That sounds all right. Yeah.
That's really nice, yeah.
So, that kind of gives you...
- Well done. - Yay!
- Come on, eh? - ..a rough idea.
- So, have you fixed it already, then? - He has fixed it.
I'd quite like to save that as a ringtone on my phone.
Actually, if you could do that again...
Before he can get Iris' 80-year-old machine sounding as good as that,
Roger needs to investigate.
So, it's always a bit kind of entering into the unknown
when you open up one of these... to take a look inside.
And we'll take the grill off...
An accordion works by blowing air from the bellows across the reeds
inside. The notes are determined by which keys and buttons are pressed.
Roger's detective work reveals a problem straight away.
What I can deduce from this is that one of the pallets has fallen off
and... Look, there's the pallet.
This is a pallet. It's a leather and felt sandwich,
and when you operate the bellows it forms an air seal,
and this is why we're getting the sound when you...
- SQUEAKING - The dead cat sound.
But the thing I need to do is just give this leather a bit of a brush.
I can glue that back on there.
I then can give it a full test,
so I can test all the notes to see
whether there are any other sounds that we don't want.
While Roger's specialist skills are focused on finessing the accordion,
the rest of The Repair Shop team
have been turning their talents to getting Jane's clock ticking
and chiming again in time for her return.
- You got a minute, Steve? - Yeah.
- Oh. - I've got your clock face.
- Would you call that a clock face or...? - It's a chapter ring.
- Chapter ring, OK. - That is looking really good.
- Is that OK? - Brilliant, oh, fantastic, thank you.
I'll leave it with you.
Now with all the pieces back in Steve's hands,
his final job is to put it back together again before Jane arrives.
Um...
I've got to make an adjustment. it's not going to go straight in.
I've put a bolt instead of a riveted screw in and I've just got to take
a very small amount of material off of the case.
After taking the clock apart down to the very last screw,
it's the very last screw that's undone Steve.
Precious seconds slipping away,
it's over to Jay for a last-minute fix.
I can't get me file in there.
I don't know whether you can just cut something like that here?
Oh, I tell you what we could do, though, we could take the door off,
cos it's the door that's in the way, isn't it?
- Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. - There we are.
- So just going straight down, you want, yeah? - Yeah, yeah.
I think that might do, actually.
- Yeah? - Right, ready? - Yeah.
What am I holding my breath for?
Tense moment.
- Perfect. - That's good. - Absolutely perfect.
Well done.
- Hello, Jane. - How are you?
Yeah, good. This is the bit we really love,
so I'll just go and get it for you.
Oh, wow.
There we are.
That looks wonderful.
Oh, look, you've done the dial...
The case...
It...
How we doing, Jane, you all right?
Dad would have liked that.
- Yeah. - He'd be, um...
He'd be proud of that and he'd be...
He would have loved to have met you.
- Aw, fantastic. - And you.
Does it go?
It-it-it's all going absolutely beautifully.
So I'm just going to chime it for you.
Ooh!
CLOCK CHIMES
How's that?
- Wonderful. - Fantastic.
HOUR STRIKES
It was ticking and chiming the day he died.
Which came as a complete surprise and was...
If you can have...
a good death, then he certainly did.
- He fell asleep in the chair next to this clock. - Aw, bless. - So...
To hear this again is absolutely wonderful.
- Um... - Bless him.
You've given it life that it had lost.
Let's have a look at the back.
- Yes, as I'm turning it around... - Let's have a look at it!
Its innards!
Oh, my goodness me!
I've cleaned everything up.
It looks like it's new!
- Yeah. - It's... That is astounding.
By getting the clock working again, I've got a bit of our father back,
which both myself and my sisters will love.
Oh, thank you...
Thank you so much, that is...
You're very, very welcome. It's been an absolute pleasure to do.
Ooh! I want to kiss you!
But I don't know if this is allowed!
I'm going to grab my sisters and say, "Come up here, girls!
"Let's have a party... Let's have a clock party!"
It's part of our family
and I am absolutely thrilled to be taking it home.
As another Repair Shop project is restored to pride of place,
accordion restorer Roger has reached a crucial point on his project.
He's taken the 80-year-old instrument to pieces
and is testing all 448 individual reeds.
- So, all of these are like notes, then? - That's correct.
- NOTE PLAYS STRONGLY - So that's kind of OK.
QUAVERING NOTE
- That's not. - OK, that's quite cool, man.
So that's how it works
and I've just been checking the general condition
of these valves, these little strips of leather.
So, Roger, now you've got this apart,
can you tell me anything more about the history?
Well, we know it's made in Italy.
Actually, this one was made in Castelfidardo.
- Oh, right. - And Castelfidardo these days is regarded
as the capital of quality accordion manufacturing.
So this has come from good stock, then?
- Yeah. - And the most expensive accordion would be, roughly...?
Well, you'd pay 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 or more...
- Thousand? - Yeah, yeah.
For professional accordions, yeah.
- Wow. - Or even more, I mean, I've seen them more than that.
And we're going to get it working and sounding beautiful again?
Yeah. It's a lovely instrument, actually, I have to say.
It just looks beautiful and when it comes back together,
- it will sound beautiful as well. - Yep.
- I'm just going to put it back again. - SQUEAK
The accordion's not the only thing in the workshop in need of a tuning.
Do you want me to tell you what note that is?
I think it was a B. I think it was...
- Oh, sorry. - There we go, try again.
HE PLAYS A "B" AND DRAWER SQUEAKS
- Yeah, there you go. - So that is B, innit? Yeah.
It's about a B.
- Is that an E-sharp? - Yeah, it's there, it's that one there.
Oh, that's a flat. That's a flat.
SQUEAK
- Finished. - So, I have to be very careful not to cause any damage
to where this lever is fixed to the key. Because if I snap that off,
then I'm going to be in trouble.
Roger's realigning all the keys on the keyboard and making sure
none are leaking air.
But the parts are nearly 80 years old and one false move now
could spell disaster.
Originally, I thought I'd just need to adjust one or two of these keys,
but actually, they all need adjusting.
And the reason why you want the keys nice and flat like this
is because it gives you a nice action.
It's like the response of the keyboard.
And also, aesthetically, of course, it looks a lot nicer.
Because now I just use my little gauge to check...
No, it's still a bit proud.
The other way. Sometimes you get it right first time and other times you
don't, but you obviously don't want to be bending it backwards and
forwards too often too much because then you're going to introduce
some kind of, you know, metal fatigue in there.
Hang on. If I broke one of these levers it would be a bit of a
problem. I'm not going to.
Also at the fine-tuning stage,
Will's angling to get a seamless fix for Faye's 60-year-old fish before
she arrives to pick it up.
A little bit of polish on that tail and we are just in time, I think.
We are really up against it today.
- Hello. - Hello.
- So, are you ready? - Yes, I am.
Da-da-dah-dah!
- Oh, lovely! My goodness. - It's got a tail!
- We have his tail! Oh, it looks great! - Yeah.
And you've actually managed to get the colour spot-on.
He's looking pretty smart and he will go home and
be put in pride of place.
- Thanks, Faye, very much. - Thank you for all that hard work.
- Bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
Roger's hoping he'll also hit the high notes with the owners
of that very special instrument he's been working on.
This is the final bellows pin, so put that in there...
And the next stage is for me to give it its final test.
- How we doing, Roger? Are we ready? - We are, yes, it's done.
It does look gorgeous.
- The only thing left now is to hear what it sounds like. - Yep.
HE PLAYS A FEW NOTES
It sounds better.
HE PLAYS A TUNE
I told you I'm not a maestro, but...
- No, it sounds good. - A kind of demo, really. - No, that's a good demo.
- So, you've fixed it, then? - Yeah. But what we've got...
I noticed it when I came in, it is just the case.
Looks extremely tired and a repair that we would not be proud of.
You've done such a great job on the actual machine itself, Roger,
it seems a shame to put it in something like this...
- Yeah, I agree. - Yeah?
So, I know a man who might be able to...
Will? He's trying to shy away at the moment.
So, Will... How we doing, my friend?
- Ah... - Got this.
- Sounds like trouble. - It is trouble. We need this repaired.
- Sounds like trouble. What's all this? - I know...
But I was thinking, what we could do...
is take this off and then you must have some kind of...
- Oh, gosh. - That's it.
- Let's not make it any worse, though, yeah? - Not any worse.
Just so it looks uniform, I would say.
Right, uniform. Well, the good thing is...
- It's solid. - It's made of plywood, I think.
Yeah, so it's just a superficial damage to the surface.
- Yeah. - I am going to work some magic.
In the next five minutes, yeah?
There's no rush, there's no rush.
OK. But probably five to three minutes.
If you make me a cup of tea, three minutes.
- I'm on it, mate, I'm on it. - Yeah?
Cup of tea. Cup of tea. Two and a half minutes now, yeah?
- Yeah, right(!) - All right, see you in a minute.
- That looks diamond. - Yeah?
Yeah! That looks good.
I'm very pleased and it looks...
It is a stunning looking instrument, I mean, I have to say,
and I am still amazed at the condition that it's in given its age,
and it's 80 years old. And I hope Sarah enjoys it and it'll keep her going
for a good few years, maybe another 80 years, who knows?
Cheers, mate.
Now restored to its former glory,
Sarah and Howard are ready to reveal the accordion to its original and
unsuspecting owner...
94-year-old Iris.
- Hello. - Mum... - Right, we've got a surprise lined up,
in case you hadn't guessed.
- Are you all right? Do you need a hand? - All right?
Hello.
So, this is your surprise.
So, you know when you opened it up and it made a terrible noise?
Yeah? Oh, you had it fixed!
Yeah. Because there was a key sticking up here...
Yeah, it was this one, I think, wasn't it?
And then when you opened it, it was...
- The note was... - Yeah, permanent noise, yeah.
Yeah. Must be ten years since I used that.
- Mm. - But it's all in working order now.
- Do you want to see Sarah play it? - Yes, please!
SHE PLAYS "SHE'LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN"
She's good.
# Singing ay ay yippee yippee ay Yee-ha!
# Singing ay ay yippee yippee ay
# Singing ay ay yippee, ay ay yippee
# Ay ay yippee yippee ay. #
- That's smashing. - Yay!
Good, very good.
She was just so happy that it had been fixed.
I can't believe what they've done. I knew nothing about it.
It was a complete shock.
The best thing was her reaction to seeing Sarah play it, without a doubt.
She got quite emotional because it brought back memories for her,
but it was also, you know, passing that legacy on to her granddaughter.
I hope that my granddaughter will look after it and play it and enjoy it
as much as I did.
Life goes on.
Join us next time as more precious pieces are rescued
and their cherished memories restored in...
The Repair Shop.