Will Kirk describes 'wonderful' restoration on The Repair Shop
BBC's The Repair Shop star Will Kirk faced a unique challenge when guest Tracy Emery brought in her grandfather's dessert wine holder, which had been charred under the heat of her kitchen light.
Tracey walked into the barn and placed her wooden chef on the table which had been in the family for years, explaining: "It is a wooden chef, well it was a wooden chef. It is actually a desert wine holder, so it opens up! It holds a bottle of wine but he had a little accident."
She added: "He was sitting in the kitchen under the counter light and somebody put the light on and he got a little bit burnt. So the only thing that has been left intact from the top was the face, which is amazing because it is the best bit."
Kirk was keen to know who was responsible for the fire, leading Tracey to clarify: "Well we don't 100 percent know, but, we think it was my dad. I was away for two nights and they were going to look after my cat, and he didn't like my cat being left in the dark, so he turned the under-counter light on and left it for the night and it was when my mum came back in the morning that they found it burnt.
"But we were very lucky that it was just this and the light that got damaged and I am very lucky that it didn't catch on anywhere else. Unfortunate for me because it is one of my favourite objects," sobbed Tracey.
The guest continued to explain that she inherited it from her grandfather after he and his wife bought it for the pub they used to run, placing him on the food counter.
She added: "When my grandad passed away, my gran asked if there was anything we wanted and I of course said the wooden chef, he just sums up my entire childhood to me and when he was sitting in my kitchen, it was like my grandad was still telling his stories to me.
"I actually keep the speech that I did at his funeral inside the wooden chef, that is what is kept inside there. [Dad was] tremendously guilty, he's the one who wanted to get it fixed for me, knowing how much it meant for me," the owner of the item explained.
"Unfortunately, he became poorly and passed away about a year ago. So now it just has an extra meaning to get fixed, because we all now have a memory of him trying to get this fixed and it was the one thing he wasn't able to do before he passed. Please, try your best, bring his stories back," she pleaded.
Upon taking the wooden chef to his workbench, Kirk examined the item and confessed: "This is in really bad condition, I have never seen something so charred on my workbench. I have never had to restore charcoal before and that is pretty much what this is."
"So I know the face should sit there... oh my god, so I am missing lots of wood, basically missing a whole section from the top of the hat and some bits from the outside. So I need to glue back together what do I have here, in a way so I can work out what is missing."
In the latest episode, jeweller Richard Talman was presented with a broken silver ring by mother-daughter duo Halina and Lesley. The ring was given to Halina's mother during World War II as a token of gratitude for providing food to families trapped in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.
Leather expert Suzie Fletcher met Gordon and his sons James and Ross, who brought in a pair of curling stones used in their father's triumphant Grand Match of 1979.
Angelina Bakalarou was tasked with restoring a vintage poster of the Bollywood film Sholay. However, it was Kirk who was handed the daunting task of repairing charred wood for Emery.
The Repair Shop airs on BBC One and can be streamed via iPlayer
