I'm in the process of refinishing a desk that my parents bought in the late '30s or early '40s. It's (African) Mahogany with a very, very dark red finish that was popular back then. While I've finally managed to have reasonable success with a burn-in stick to fill some gouges and assorted other defects, I found that it necessary to strip the finish off a smallish section of one drawer front. I've mixed up some stain that's close enough, as determined by applying it to the sanded back of some drawer fronts to recreate the color, but the area I wanted to re-stain wasn't taking anything, not stain, not colored shellac, and not even a powdered dye.
SO ... I decided to strip to entire finish from the drawer front. After failing to get anything off with Alcohol, Turpentine, Mineral Spirits, Lacquer Remover, and Xylene, I tried a last resort: Acetone. That works perfectly and the wood is getting close to bare and I can, if I want to, re-stain it.
BUT ... before I re-stain, I think I'd rather try to duplicate the original finish, which leads me to the question: what finishing method in use in the late '30s or early '40s on mahogany would have a solvent that was exclusively Acetone?
TIA Norm