How does wood age? Mystery dresser

I had to basically carve this nailhead out because it (and the rest of them) are so deep down. The nails in the back of the piece are all similar to this: slightly squared ovals, all a bit different from each other.



@verybrad I was wondering what you meant when you said the smaller round-headed nails were "modern". According to this, such (or similar at least I assume) have been around since the 1890's:

 

The one in your detail picture of the top corner looks like a modern finish nail with a dimple for counter-sinking. Also, it is shiny and the hole looks to have never been filled. Old furniture that uses nails where they would be apparent, should have the holes filled. The ones you are showing on the back look old.

The picture of the stripped piece is not good enough for a comparison. Nails on stripped pieces such as this often lose their filling material in the holes and show rust as this one does. There are certainly round head nails that are old. It just looks like this one you show is new.

 

Would have been nice to know this up front. New paint can hide a lot of sins. Makes me wonder why they didn't fill those nail holes before painting.

 

which one? the bigger ones aren't even round.

i say yawn at this whole mess.

 

The finish nail shown in the top corner detail with the dimple in it.

 

Your nail photo above looks like it could be from a nail gun run with that extremely oval head and these rust fast if not galvanized. The depth you describe sounds like from nail gun force too, as does the very slight wood split. Is there any cross-grid or other pattern on the tops of the nail heads?

 

Here are the rest of the nails that hold the decorative elements on place (I suppose). Some of them have some paint on them.

 

These don't appear to have the dimple as the one does. Maybe it doesn't either and is a function of the paint, photography, or both. I still don't like the way these look like they have never been filled.

 

I don't know if that would've been a priority back then when it comes to simple painted pine. Even if it was, how do you know they haven't been filled?
The dresser has had at least two previous coats of paint, that's what I was told.

I still can't get over the fact of how light the wood is in some (many) spots. Maybe the contrasting black makes it look even lighter than it is. And the whole interior is so clean. Maybe I'm over analysing or maybe I'm just used to very rustic pieces of furniture so the pristine-ness of this one shocks me.

This + some (a small number) of the Bukowski's examples I showed earlier just make me speechless. H O W can the wood of a 120-year-old piece of furniture look like that? HOW?

 

Stripping baths bleach pine. I remember back when stripped pine was fashionable, I was doing some building renovations and Britain was fighting Argentina for the Falklands, I'd take doors and things to the local stripper where they went into a large tank of hot caustic soda for a few hours, and they'd come out looking like new wood after the paint remnants were hosed off. At the time everything from kitchen cupboards to painted pine longcase clocks was getting the treatment.

Depending on the type of filler used it would vanish with the paint or stay in the nail-holes. Possibly the wood did not look exactly like new wood, but it was very clean wood.

If painting and stripping wood as fashion dictates is still practiced where you are, the stripper is probably the reason for clean looking wood.

When the current fashion for painting wooden furniture dies out, the local stripper with his big tank of caustic soda will once gain thrive.

It seems you can still find it here and there, here is one with a picture of some stripped pine.

http://www.stokesleypinestripping.co.uk/pine-stripping/

 

I don't think the no-paint look has been very popular since the early 1990's but there's at least one place that sells stripped antique country pine furniture that I know of but I don't think this one is from there. It's possible though that it's been stripped similarly.