In the near future I'm going to be stripping some heavily-carved dark oak (Victorian) furniture - something I haven't done before. I'm expecting to use a chemical stripper of some form and a toothbrush, followed-up with oxalic acid, but it would be useful to hear what strippers, or other techniques, people have used ... ?
How to strip dark oak furniture?
Feb 01, 2021
Last reply: 5 years ago
1 Replies
at that period the predominant varnish was in cfact shellac a k a French polish. You can get that off with ethyl alcohol.
you may come across various varnishes based on cellulose nitrate/acetate - MEK/acetone will dissolve those.
I've been restoring a bit of early 20th century dark oak using model aircraft dope and a spirit based dark stain, mixed.
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