Finish Questions

[Sonny]

I am at a loss for an explanation and possibly a remedy. Several issues are in question and some info is unknown.

For some immediate answers, I plan to do some test applications to find out if household alcohol (isopropal alcohol) will penetrate and/ or remove cured tung oil, specifically Hope's 100% tung oil. Also, I want to find out if household alcohol will remove Varathane gun stock oil stain, once it has cured.

Do any of you have any experience or idea if household alcohol will remove either of these cured oil products? I am thinking the alcohol should not do a thing to either of these oil products, once cured on a project. If you want more of the story and offer comments, read on, but I'd be satisfied with a short answer to just this question.

The specific issue is: Someone recently marked a tabletop with a Sharpie felt pen. According to the owner, the table had been stripped (2 years ago) of its original finish and **stained with Varathane gunstock oil stain and topcoated with several coats of Hope's 100% tung oil. Household alcohol was used to try to remove the Sharpie ink and the ink, oil finish and oil stain was came off, when the alcohol "cleanser" was used. I find it hard to believe the alcohol would affect (remove) the oil finishes, this way, hence, my testing.

**It is reported, that, there were problems, also, with this restaining and refinishing, 2 years ago. No details are given about these problems, hence one of the unknowns, here.

Also, it is reported the ink penetrated into the tung oil coats.... that it did not just lay on the surface. I am thinking: Sharpie ink would not penetrate into a cured oil finish. Am I wrong? Comments please.

I am wondering if the table's refinishing history is accurate. I am thinking, either, the reported finishing schedule is incorrect or the oils were defected or contaminated (*the finished table coats were reported as cured and, after 2 years, whatever finishes were on the table, I have to believe was, in fact, cured). I am wondering if a shellac type product was actually used, rather than the oils, as reported.

Subsequently: The ink affected areas have been prepped and ready for restaining and topcoating. Again, oil topcoating was attempted, but the oil is not adhering properly.... it is bubbling up. I am wondering if this problem is similar to the problems of 2 years ago, when the stripping and restaining was done, then.

So: Should the household alcohol have removed the oil finishes, as reported? If the answer is no, then I think I've been given an incorrect history of this table.

Sonny

[Noons]

Sonny wrote,on my timestamp of 9/01/2011 1:37 PM:

Normal alcohol should not take off oil finishes. I'm inclined to agree with you on the incorrect history. Strong possibility that some wax+shellac combination was used and that could indeed be damaged by alcohol. And it'd have been damaged as well by the sharpie ink, which usually contains alcohol-based solvent.

[nailshooter41]

Wow... lots of questions.

First, yes a Sharpie will EASILY penetrate an oil finish. No problem. One of the carriers in the Sharpie ink that allows great penetration on almost any surface is benzine. Oil finishes are no match, nor are many others. Sharpies will ruin just about any finish you can imagine.

Second household alcohol shouldn't do anything that water wouldn't do to your oil finishes. Those "tung oil" and other types of finishes sold for gun stocks are hybrid oil finishes in the varnish family, made to pad onto a surface, one little skinny coat at a time. They are made for the home guy (that doesn't mean a poor end product) that wants an easy to apply. fool proof finish that doesn't take much skill to apply.

Remember that household alcohol is usually 50% (rarely 70%) water. Just plain old water, nothing special. So household alcohol could raise a water stain on your oil finish, but it shouldn't remove it. I would think most likely your finish came off due to some industrious scrubbing needed to get the deep penetration of the Sharpie ink off.

You should also know that tung oil, linseed oil, boiled linseed oil, conditioned walnut oil, and on an on..... provide protection against dust. That's about it. It has no abrasion resistance, no resistance to cleaning agents, isn't water resistant, and it yellows badly over time. Good stuff, no?

Using it to finish a table top is nuts. It sounds to me that someone couldn't even manage an easy finish, so they chickened out and just rubbed oil on it. As far as the oil bubbling up, there is obviously something bad going on there. If you are bubbling up the old finish, the new finish you are putting on the now is to hot, has too many VOCs, however you want to say it. If the new finish is bubbling up, you probably have contaminates on the surface such as dusting spray or spray polish. Good luck getting that off. Lacquer thinner will do it, but it will destroy that oil cured stuff on the table.

Now the good news of course, is that it should be easy enough to strip off that cheesy, thin, oil finish and put on a real finish. ;^) (Just thinking of an earlier thread....)

Robert

[J. Clarke]

Uh, Naishooter, read what he wrote more carefully. He said that two products were used, "Varahane gun stock stain", which is not a gun product but one of the colors of the Varathane Premium line that Home Depot and the like sell. And that it was topped with "Hope's 100 percent tung oil", the MSDS for which says "Raw tung oil is not a hazardous material . . ."

So it was finished with raw tung oil on top of a commonplace consumer stain.

And it would not surprise me at all if isopropyl alchohol dissolved it.

In fact now I'm curious. I've got some Varathane stain and some pure tung oil, think I'll make up a sample on a scrap, let it sit for a year or so, and see what happens.

If raw tung oil is bubbliing up there's something weird going on. It should either soak in or just lie there until you wipe it off.

[J. Clarke]

Well, I tried a couple of experiments. I found out that 50% isopropyl does have some effect on both Varathane and tung oil.

I had intended to make a sample and set it aside for a year and see what happened, just for my one information, but in the process of doing that, I found that I had enough material to get some answers.

There was some dried stain on the bare (Harbor Freight jummy-)wood handle of the disposable brush I had used to apply it last time I used it. It had been there for more than a month so I think it was as cured as it's going to get. I tried alcohol on that. As expected, the stain on the surface came right off but that down in the grain wasn't touched. I poured alcohol on the handle and let it sit until it had nearly all evaporated then tried rubbing and it still did not remove the stain down in the crevices in the grain. I found a couple of drips on the bench top. I went after one of those with alcohol and it cleaned off with some effort. I tried the other one with a bare towel and it also came off, but in flakes that shook off of the towel rather than as a continuous discoloration.

I got out the bottle of tung oil (been years since I had touched it--had a child-safe cap on it and wasn't _that_ fun) and found that it had some runs and fingerprints and whatnot on the outside of the bottle. I tried wiping the runs and fingerprints and whatnot off with a towel and scraping them with my fingernail and neither removed them. So I wiped it down with a rag and alcohol and it again took some effort but it did clean up.

Conclusion--50% isopropyl will dissolve both Varathane Premium stain and

100% tung oil, but it is not particularly agressive about doing either and doesn't remove the stain from the indentations in the grain.

Now as to whether it should have "removed" the finishes, I'd really need to see the piece I think.

[tiredofspam]

Wow do I find it hard to believe that benzine is used in sharpies. Alcohol yes, since it removes sharpie marks, but benzine.

Know> Wow... lots of questions.

[tiredofspam]

Just as I suspected. No benzine in a Sharpie. Below is the MSDS. Nice misinformation.

Colors: All Colors NewellRubbermaid, > Wow... lots of questions.

[Noons]

Ah well, you know: it's the Internet, so it must be true...

Mind you: acetone will go through just about any finish, so if diacetone is anything like it...

[nailshooter41]

Well, nice catch. I hope you didn't miss any sleep. It appears I was thinking of xylene, or even toluene. Apparently, there never was any benzine in the markers. Whoops! But hey, what's a few V.O.C.s between friends?

Apparently only a few models even have xylene in them anymore. When you Googled, I am sure you found that the makers of Sharpies are quite proud that most of their products no longer have the really V.O.C. components. Personally, I wasn't aware of big change over to the new carriers.

Now if we are just sure it wasn't an older Sharpie, or a marker from another maker (like a Xerox is used for a copy, or a Coke is used for any kind of fizzy drink), we would be spot on, no?

Still, good to be up to date. Thanks for the info.

Robert

[Han]

" [e-mail]" wrote in news:1fd1f89a- [e-mail]:

Benzene is the bad guy. Benzine is like gasoline, in fact the Dutch word for gasoline is benzine. For benzine think lighter fluid.

[nailshooter41]

Thanks, Han. I know what benzine is and have used it as a cleaning agent on site.

Anyone that has lived in the USA knows what benzine is if they have had anything dry cleaned. Benzine, mixed with other stuff was the cleaner of choice for about 40 years for garments that required "dry" cleaning.

I remember in the early 60s, my Mom would get my Dad's suits from the cleaners and hang them out in the garage with the bag off to let the benzine smell evaporate before he wore them.

Robert

[Robatoy]

Benzine should not be confused with benzene or benzyne. So there! I can Wiki with the best of them! Seeing as I like to pick nits, drycleaning fluid is something else entirely. and I Wiki: Michael Faraday first synthesized tetrachloroethene in 1821 by thermal decomposition of hexachloroethane. Whodathunkit, eh? Of all people? You thought you knew Faraday... but noooooooo. (I guess some people confused him with Queen Faraday, or ..nebber mind, I done enough damage... King Faraday? Anybody wants to be King Faraday?)(To be left alone faraday?) "You'e got to let that stuff dry faraday...THEN recoat."

Okay, outta here... back to work.

[krw]

Dry cleaning fluid is Perchlorethane, commonly known as "Perc".

Benzene is really nasty stuff and should never be used as a cleaner. AFAIK, it's not legal to use for anything other than making gasoline.

[Robatoy]

Okay... you tell me what the difference is between perc and tetrachloroethene.

C2Cl4 and C2Cl4 is different how?

[krw]

Where did you say it was TCE? You said it was "something else entirely", meaning NOT benzene. True, it's not benzene.

[nailshooter41]

You are of course, correct. I had never heard of Hope's tung oil, and thought that he was referring the old Hoppe's gun care kits. Certainly an error on my part. I should not have assumed but with all the spelling errors around here all the time (mine included) I assumed....

I am Nailshooter, and it is Varathane, no? Still, my mistake.

As far as the alcohol/water/tung oil/stain problem, there could be a semantics definition problem. I will certainly take it on myself.

If a finish is removed by a solvent, then to me it is removed as in a stripper, REMOVED. Bare wood indicates "removed". If a weaker solvent or limited exposure from a solvent to an area affects the finish of a piece, I think of it in finishing/refinishing terms. That would be called a damage.

I wouldn't be surprised at anything that dissolved or damaged tung oil. To me, there isn't a bigger waste of time than tung except when using it as a toner.

Would household alcohol dissolve it more aggressively than plain water? I don't think so, but I see you have performed your own experiment in a later post. Will it remove finish? Sure it will when used with a scrub brush, scouring pad or even a soft putty knife.

But so will water. Take a piece of wood with XX coats of tung oil on it, then put water on long enough for the white ring to appear. Your finish will be damaged, and on its way to ruin. Although water won't work as a thinner for tung oil, tung sure dissolves well underneath it.

I know you are an avid reader of this group, so I was hoping you remembered an earlier post when DS was asking about changing the color/ finish on a piece. I was relying to get a bit more mileage from the winky face than I apparently did, even when referencing an earlier thread.

Semantics again? Beats me. Not seeing the piece, I don't know if the finish was removed, or simply damaged.

Robert

[J. Clarke]

His point was that benzine with an "i" is different from "benzene" with three "e"s. There's also a "benzyne" with a "y" that is different from either.

In the US the stuff that in Han's part of the world is called "benzine" is sold as "VM&P Naphtha".

Further, you have to be a really old guy to remember benzene used for dry cleaning--it went out in the '30s when effective non-flammable solvents became available.

[Josepi]

Yeah, then came carbon tetrachloride, that people dropped dead from, the very same day, and now trichlorethylene, only one twenty fifth as toxic. I guess you have twenty five days to drop dead now...LOL

[nailshooter41]

I decided to join you at Google U. Sadly, we ugly Americans seem to spell it as we will, refer to it as we will. While I was able to find a few odd references to the usage of "y" in the mix, the "e"s and "i"s seem to be used even in the sites owned by suing attorneys with wild abandon.

Not so. When attending Google U classes, you must read as much material as you can stand. The dry cleaning agent used widely by the industry in the 30's (benzine? benzene? benzyne?) fell out of favor, but didn't disappear.

In fact, small shops found it to be a cheap and effective method of cleaning, and apparently used it until meeting OSHA goals became impossible.

From I L Feitshans Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205.

***********

Regulatory History of Benzene Exposure in the U.S.

*********** The first evidence of risk from acute or chronic effects for exposure to benzene was recognized in 1900 (13). According to OSHA, "the benzene-leukemia link was first identified in 1897 in a report on the leukemia death of a worker occupationally exposed to benzene" (14). Winslow recommended a 100-ppm exposure limit in 1927 (15). Benzene's long regulatory history began in 1934, when Massachusetts established a Division of Occupational Hygiene in its Department of Labor and Industries (16) to investigate benzene toxicity. Based upon reports by Bowditch, Hunter, Mallory, and Elkins (17), it set a "maximum acceptable limit" (MAC) of 75 ppm, which was soon reduced to 35 ppm. In 1946, the American Conference of Government Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) recommended a threshold limit value (TLV) of 100 ppm for benzene, which was lowered lowered to 35 ppm in 1948 and 25 ppm in 1963 (18). In 1971, OSHA adopted the voluntary industrial limit of 10 ppm, set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as part of its acceptance of "national consensus standards" (19). In that same year, the International Labor Office (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, adopted ILO Convention number 136, "Convention Concerning Protection Against Hazards Arising From Benzene," which incorporated the ACGIH's standard and set an international ceiling of 25 ppm for occupational exposure.

***********

A follow up on the adoption of using benzene in the dry cleaning industry reveals that a large group of cleaners didn't move from using benzene as a cheap and effective agent for business, but simply used safer handling techniques.

Apparently (your Google search terms may yield different results) the industry moved away from benzine for good after the 1963 ruling to lower the recommended count of 33 ppm in 1963. Since at that time OSHA had little or no enforcement capability at that time, it is unclear exactly how long it took the industry to move away from benzene compound.

No doubt you found that it is still used for cleaning in certain circumstances today.

No doubt you found it is still used in manufacture of certain goods.

In the end, I think I just don't care.

Robert

[Han]

"Josepi" wrote in news:vq%Wo.7969$ [e-mail]:

Carbon tet is a cumulative liver poison. Dad used it often enough to get small stains out. Died at almost 93 from brain atherosclerosis and its consequences (bad).