Furniture 'restoration'

[stephen.hull]

If its an oil varnish is won't be resoluble but a spirit varnish made with meths will or should be resoluble.

Stephen.

[stephen.hull]

Oh now what a waste!

Stephen.

[Andy Dingley]

Shellac isn't a varnish, nor even a spirit varnish. Certainly not the usual "oil type" varnishes (which don't involve oils, but I know what you mean).

Really you have to _identify_ before you go near the thing.

[Theo Markettos]

FWIW, here's what I did to the first (plywood desk):

Try wire wool and white spirit, discover that white spirit wasn't shifting anything that abrasion didn't. I came to the conclusion the surface was polyurethane.

Try wire wool on its own. It got off the very worn varnish, but was fairly hard work on the stuff towards the back that was thicker.

Eventually gave up and got out the sander. Wire wooled the bits that were heavily stained/worn so as to get all the edges of varnish off, and power sanded through the thick areas. A few hours later I had all the surface clean of varnish.

Cleaned surface with a clean rag and white spirit, left to dry

Wiped with a rag with 4 coats of Liberon's Finishing Oil, roughly one per day.

It looks really great - apart from a few deep scratches and two huge water stains which are now just about visible if you stare at them, all the stains have gone. It's also not sticky.

I haven't tried eating my dinner off it, but it claims to be water and heat resistant. Just needs a re-wipe with oil once a year.

So thanks for all the advice... I didn't exactly follow all of it, but I ended up with a nice result in the end :-)

Theo

[Clot]

Thanks for the reply. We are all better off for the discussion.

[Cash]

Theo,

Nice to see that you were successful with the job, and thanks for posting the results of the work.

Cash