Refinishing a leather top table

Scrape instead.

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Is this a modern table or an aunty-Q? If the latter, standard disclaimers about refinishing sometimes killing the value apply.

If the table has any money or heirloom value, I would bite the bullet and take it to a furniture repair shop. Unless the leather is a glued-down inlay, they can probably take it apart to refinish it. If it is glued down, they may know the correct technique for masking it non-destructively. Quite often old pieces don't really need a bare-wood refinishing, they just need the gunk cleaned off and the top coat redone. If the leather can't be removed or masked tightly, you are looking at mechanical finish removal, rather than chemical.

-- aem sends...

Nothing to do with leather, but my fraternity had a piano I wanted to clean up. I repaired the keys and one string and went to clean the dampers of their dust and dirt.

All the dampers were grey/brown. There were many "layers" of dust and underneath all that was a shiny piece of wood, with grain showing that all were cut from the same piece of wood. Looked beautiful.

Carefully remove the leather, refinish the table, replace the leather.