I have an old (1840ish) walnut table top on which I propose doing the following after washing with lacquer thinner denatured alcohol mix, scraping and sanding: restain top with a walnut stain followed by a light garnet shellac application and finally some thin coats of boiled linseed oil. Is this procedure ok to use or is there something else I should do? Thanks. Duffer04
Removing the old finish will destroy its value as an antique.
What is wrong with the old finish that makes you want to remove it?
-- dadiOH ____________________________
dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at
Thanks for the reply. (I am new at doing this kind of restoration)
Last- My dad had a recipe he used decades ago to solve the problems of water/alcohol stains. 1/4 super spar varnish, 1/4 BLO, and 1/2 turp. (My oldGeorge Grotz book on furniture says to never use Spar varnish). I was thinking of using this.
You are right about changing the value antiques but when my daughter found this table at the side of the road it had really been damaged. Two of the legs were held on with angle irons. I took the whole table apart, built a new side rail from an old old piece of oak, re glued pieces as necessary, and put the pieces all back together. So far it's coming along nicely. The piece orignally had been painted white and many years ago, I believe, stripped, stained and varnished. The table top was a bit grungy looking. So as an antique its value is somewhat questionable. My daughter's answer to the question here and in general is to paint it. It hopefully look better when I finish. Depending on how this turns out I would contemplate building table leaves so the full extension of the table (96") can be used.
So it sounds like you are back to partially stained bare wood. If the table is solid wood (not veneer), I would try sanding to get out most of the trapped paint.
Any "stain" that accludes white paint has gobs of pigment in it. Pigment is opaque stuff that will obscure both the paint spots and the wood. Lots of pigment is called paint. We are all about seeing the wood here, not obscuring it.
The first pass of the top coat os a perfectly good sealer... there's no reason to mess with a separate product (to the group: don't get me wrong, I like shellac as a sanding sealer, but for a newbie, that extra complication is not worth the subtle advantages)
BLO is a lousy top coat. It's soft, and compareed to alternatives, it is rather *pervious* to water
Use a wipe-on poly, or a wipe-on Varnish such as Waterlox. 3 or fours coats of either will both seal and give you decent surface protection. You should use a wipe-on product because it goes on thinner and any potential finnish imperfections (dust,drips,runs) will be correspondingly smaller. Many thin coats always gives a better result than one thick one.
The question really was... what's wrong with the finish that is/was there?
Simplified: this is a long-oil wiping varnish. Varnish is a mix of oil and resin, you're just adding more oil. The turps makes the mix thinner (see my comments on wipe-on products above). It changes the viscosity for the purposes of application, but evaporates shortly thereafter and is not a factor in the cured finish.
Products like Waterlox, or "danish oil" are typically some form of resin/oil/solvent mix using a proprietary ratio and choice of ingredients. Home brews, such as your Dad's recipe can work very well. However, if you don't have the time or inclination to experiment, a commercially mixed product, for which you get first hand recommendations, can be a better bet.
-Steve
You are doing the right thing by refinishing or at least restoring the table. Based on your description in a subsequent posting, the table has been through at least one attempt at refinishing. Even the Keno brothers have finally admitted that proper restoration will actually increase the value of an antique when properly needed and done.
There is no need to wash with a lacquer thinner and alcohol mix (an AMT stripper). Cleaning to remove grease and water soluble dirt is what is needed. You say you are going to scrape and sand so you will be removing the top most layer of wood. You may as well just strip it so you don't have as much work. You will also be left with a cleaner surface which a light sanding will make nearly perfect. The sanding might not even be necessary. By the way, how do you know that the current finish is varnish? If it softens or becomes sticky with alcohol, you have shellac. If it does so only with lacquer thinner, you have lacquer. In either case, an AMT stripper would actually be perfect in these cases as they dry quickly and do not need post washing.
The "flecks of paint" are very likely not paint but residual grain filler. This is very common in older pieces of the age you suspect the table is. It is very hard to remove the filler completely and I have only had success with a brass brush no matter how many times the surface is stripped. You may need to use a different finishing schedule to hide any remaining grain filler (see below).
Restaining is fine if you wish to reproduce the old patina. If not, and there are no obvious color differences in the boards of the top that detract from the beauty of the surface, you can skip the staining if you like.
Garnet shellac is a good toner. I use it quite a bit on cherry.
An oil is not going to do anything on top of a film finish like shellac. It will not penetrate into wood that is sealed with shellac. You might consider reversing the schedule - put the oil on first, let it cure, and then put on the shellac. This will also have the effect of making any residual grain filler "disappear". My only concern is that oiling a dark wood like walnut will only make it darker, perhaps quite a bit. I have found that shellac solutions have about the right index of refraction to hide grain filler so you might want to skip the oil all together. If it does not seem to work, varnish definitely will so you will have to skip the shellac and go right to varnish.
Make sure you try these things in an inconspicuous part of the table before going all out.
The nice thing about shellac is that it dries really quickly so you can get on with refinishing and not have wait for something like varnish to dry. It is also easily removed, just wipe down a few times with alcohol, so if you make a mistake, you can remove it. I would not bother with an oil, varnish, thinner mixture. For a table, straight varnish will build more quickly.
Good Luck.
Ok, sounds like none of the original finish is left to be preserved.
The word varnish is often used as a generic for any hard tranparent finish hence we have 'water-based' varnishes today and I've read claims that 'violin varnish' is shellac.
But in general varnish is a finish made by cooking a resin, a 'drying' oil, thinner and a 'drying agent' under pressure and in the absence of oxygen.
A varnish can be long-oil,. normal, or short-oil. Spar varnish is a long-oiol varnish, meaning it has a higher oil to resin ratio and produces a softer but more flexible finish suitable for spars. A short oil varnish has a lower oil to resin ratio and would be suitable for a tabletop. The finish you mention has a few variations, 1-1-1 and 1-2-3 hae been suggested here on the rec. Spar varnish is probably not the varnish you want to use for the 1-1-2 finish, it already has extra oil in it. The formulas produce a 'wiping varnish' that is applied with a rag and may be similar to what you'd get by just thinning spar varnish, though when you add you own oil you are adding 'uncooked' oil to the 'cooked' oil in the varnish.
This is not the first time I have heard of using oil over shellac. Not sure what the effect is, but I'd guess it cuts the gloss back.
Is the walnut stain to make it look a bit more like walnut?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.