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Mike Holbrook
04-22-2016, 11:42 AM
Apparently there is not a restoration forum on SMC so here I am again with with restoration questions, which I guess are finishing questions.

The wife bought this "antique/scrap" bench. It has been on our porch, outdoors for years. She left the peeling paint that was on it, for looks. So now the finish is flaking off on the used surfaces. Interesting because this process reveals several colors it was painted over the years.

I like this piece of furniture and would like to use it in a mountain home we plan to build in the near future. I am not concerned as much with restoring any "antique" value as preserving the wood and making it into a functional indoor piece of furniture.

I was thinking about trying to scrape the old paint off with card & cabinet scrapers first. I also have a gallon of Urethan/Paint remover that says it is "biodegradable and safe". The restoration specialist at my local Woodcraft suggested it. I am hoping I can get the paint off and put a more natural wood finish on it. I cant tell what kind of wood it is yet but it seems relatively hard and has not done much in the way of splitting..over the years.

Am I headed in a good direction?

Wayne Lomman
04-25-2016, 8:31 AM
Mike, starting with scraping the paint off is good to get rid of the loose and flaking paint. I personally prefer to stop scraping before I get to the point where there is much bare timber as I don't like risking damage to the surface.

Stripper works well. The trick to getting it to work better is to cover the applied stripper with 3 or 4 layers of newspaper - stops the surface drying out and increases the effectiveness of the stripper. Several layers of paint may mean more than one application of stripper.

After you have finished stripping the paint, give the whole bench a really good wash all over so that all stripper is removed. You need to wet it evenly so that it dries evenly without warping.

'Biodegradable and safe' to me means still wear good gloves and safety glasses and collect all the waste together and dispose of it like any other paint waste. Cheers

John TenEyck
04-25-2016, 1:38 PM
Bio degradable stripper to me means it doesn't work very well. The old stuff with methylene chloride (KleanStrip Premium, for example) does work. Do it outside and wear PPE.

There's no real way to tell what you've got until you get it stripped down to bare wood. Might be some really nice hardwood underneath, many church pews used very nice oak, etc., or it could be plain Jane wood if it came from a poor parish. Just gotta strip it to find out. Avoid sanding until you have it stripped. Scrape off the loose stuff, then let the stripper do it's work.

Good luck,

John

Dan Hulbert
04-25-2016, 1:43 PM
I've done more than my fair share of stripping over the years. The wife would by old, reclaimed doors for our house in MA and wanted them to look nearly new. Card and cabinet scrapers work fine, but I had the best results using broken glass scrapers. It's a little dangerous, but well placed tape helps a lot. Break some plain window glass and use the shards as scrapers. Typically, the tape goes on the concave edge of the shard (they are usually curved). I always kept a coffee can of broken glass handy to find "just the right piece". Anything over about 6-8" long breaks easy if you put too much force on it.
Only after scraping off as much as I could would I then do a final pass with stripper.
A can of broken glass and a roll of tape are a lot cheaper than buckets of stripper. Those were the days of limited resources.
For those tough to scrape areas, slap on the stripper and cover to keep it working. I would often use waxed paper. It holds more moisture in and you can kind of see how things are progressing without lifting it.