Removing Wax Finish from Interior Doors

[shawry75]

Hi, I need to remove a coloured Wax finish from a number of Interior doors to take them back to the bare wood so they can be refinished,

Does anyone know the most effective and fastest way of doing this, using white spirit or sandpaper seems to slowly do the trick but will take days to finish this way,

Are there any better ways of going about this task?

Thanks, Chris

[Stuart Noble]

If it really is wax, white spirit and wire wool is about as good as it gets. If it's a wax "look" finish you may have to go to paint stripper

[fred]

In article , [e-mail] writes

Snowboard base cleaner. The citrus based cleaners (Red being one) are used to clean old wax out of porous snowboard bases and are amazingly effective, think supermarket citrus cleaner x10. Only available in small bottles (250ml) and expensive (10GBP) but used sparingly it would do several doors.

Available from S/B shops & online. eg:

off any excess wax first and finish with a wipe of white spirit to get rid of the cleaner.

[Stuart Noble]

How do they do that? Are you sure they don't just drive the wax further into the base like white spirit would? How do they lift something out of a porous material? Just asking

and are amazingly

[fred]

I think of it being a bit like washing up liquid or laundry liquid/powder, it seems to dissolve the wax/grime and retain it in the liquid. Then when you wipe off the excess, the wax comes with it and the surface appears wax free and dry.

With white spirit you've got the solvent/dilution action without the retention so I think that is less effective.

It's one of those things that has to be seen to be believed, amazing stuff.

[Stuart Noble]

Well, yes, it acts like any detergent, but what stops it penetrating what you describe as a porous surface?

[fred]

This is the bit where you re-read:

Try it, if it works for you, great, if it doesn't then come back and let us know but I don't have intimate analytical knowledge of all the products that I use, like and work for me, I'm just a satisfied user.