I have a cherry junior bed that was made in the late 1930’s and finished with burnt umber. I painted it with a pink enamel about 40 years ago because the burnt umber was almost black and was too dark for a little girl’s room. I am now in the process of refinishing it and trying to remove all the old finish so the grain and color of the cherry can be appreciated. Many coats of paint remover followed by repeated application of a card scraper have removed about all of the pink enamel and much of the burnt umber. However, there are still quite a few blotches of burnt umber that don’t seem to want to come off.
Does anyone have a suggestion for how to coax the burnt umber out of the grain?
Replies
You could wave a pork chop and whistle.
Sorry I couldn't resist. Probably need to scrape the whole thing with sharp scrapers.
There are caustic strippers but probably not going to be much different from what you have already used.
roc
Have you used strippers containing methylene chloride? That's the most potent stripper material, though the draw back is the need for excellent ventilation since you do not want to breathe those fumes. You want a generous coating and you want it to stay in place a long time. To keep it from drying up too soon, cover it with plastic wrap.
You may have to have further resort to the card scrapers since you have already used them. But scraping and sanding should be a last resort. Even under all that finish, the cherry will have picked up a richer coloration (patina) that is worth preserving if possible.
Edited 2/10/2009 6:42 am ET by SteveSchoene
Oops! I didn't know about the patina buildup over time. I'm afraid whatever might have been there is long gone. Anyway, thanks for your response. I guess the only alternative at this point is a few more coats of stripper.
I have been fairly carefull about the fumes, working only when I can move the whole operation out into my driveway and hooking up a large floor standing fan when there is not very much breeze.
Again, thanks for your input.
Ed, if the burnt umber was a dye stain you will find that they are only partially removed by chemical paint removers. It is normal to have to use a chlorine bleach to remove the dye stain residue. Use a fresh bottle of Clorox. Dilute it about one part Clorox to three parts distilled water. Wipe the mixture on the surface and keep it wet until the color is gone. YOu may have to do it more than once.Howie.........
I am concerned about using clorox. Years ago I used clorox to remove all color from some mahogany that was included as part of a cabin cruiser model I built. The point of the clorox was to make the mahogany resemble teak for the deck, and the result was convincing. If I put clorox on the cherry won't that result in the same sort of effect and leave unsightly "bleached looking" stains on the wood?
Chlorine bleach doesn't generally remove all color from the wood, and the small amount of natural color removed can be pretty easily restored with new dye or pigment of the desired colors. If you are concerned about it, check it out in a place that isn't noticable.
Thanks. I'll give it a try on the bottom inside of the rails.
I am not convinced that you have removed all the prior finish. What chemical paint remover did you use? How many applications did you make?As Steve said, chlorine bleach (Clorox) should not materially change the color of the wood. Be sure and apply the bleach to all the wood to equalize any slight change in color. You will have to sand after bleaching and that should even out the color.There are three bleaches used in woodworking. o Chlorine bleach removes dye stain color(not pigment stains)
o Oxalic Acid remove black mineral stains and rust stains
o Two part A/B bleach removes the natural color of wood.Howie.........
The paint remover is methylene chloride based, and I have applied it perhaps 4 or 5 times. The first couple of times was primarily to remove the pink enamel oil based paint that I put on about 40 years ago. The subsequent coats have been to attack the burnt umber.
Since my Dad built the bed in the late 1930's, I can only assume that the burnt umber was an oil-base stain but I am not really sure. The remnants are smudges of darker color. Is there anything that can remove pigment stain?
"Is there anything that can remove pigment stain?"
Generally, no. The problem you've got is that burnt umber, particularly from many decades ago, is a mineral-based pigment based on manganese and iron oxide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnt_umber
Now that the carrier is long-gone, the only way you're getting back out of the wood is to physically remove it (I rather doubt bleaching it will work either - chlorine is an oxidizer, and works best on organic chemical stains. In this case, the minerals are already oxidized). The easiest way is to physically scrape the top surface off. That will, of course, take away the top surface of oxidized cherry.
At that point, you will have to decide whether you like the brighter color which will darken rapidly at first, then more slowly as it ages, or whether you want to re-color it. There's a lot of aniline dyes that work well with cherry, though they tend to change color over time.
Perhaps the easiest way to darken the piece after scraping is to use sunlight. After about 20 hours of direct sun, the cherry will darken considerably, at which point you can decide whether to finish it as is (perhaps with a darker clear finish, such as button or garnet shellac), or darken it further with an aniline dye.
Thank you for the information and a reason not to tackle the bleaching process. It sounds like the card scraper and maybe an orbital sander and hand sanding on the turned parts are the only options available. However, your suggestion about sunlight lends hope that I can get back to some approximation of "old cherry" patina.
While sanding will be a bit of a pain, at least I will be able to proceed without having to wait for a warm day to move the project out to the driveway for another round of paint strippng.
Ed - One last ditch "maybe" might be worth pursuing before you give up on stripping. You might try so-called "brush renewer" from the Home Depot/Lowes. This solvent is a mixture of things akin to laquer thinner, and it's sometimes effective at removing dried/cured oil. It's possible that the solvent may loosen the carrier of the burnt umber sufficiently to get the surface reasonably clean, at which point you could expose it to sunlight and/or re-dye the wood. Personally, I think that'd be much preferable to sanding. I suspect you're going to find that if you do any sanding, you will have to do a lot of sanding, because the umber coloring will make sanding scratches really stand out.
By the way - considering the time period when the bed was made, the coloring/finish is likely to contain a fair amount of lead. Obviously, you don't want to breath the dust created from sanding it, so do it outside, wear a dust mask/respirator, and use a shop vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter on the ROS if you decide to go this way.
Personally, I think I'd just apply a coat of aniline dye over what you have now, and seal everything with a spray coat of laquer, or several coats of manually-applied shellac.
Your idea about brush renewer sounds like a much more attractive solution; I'll give it a try first. Sanding on the headboard and the side rails shouldn't be too much of a problem since an orbital sander could be easy to steer around the surfaces. However, the four turned posts would have to be strictly manual with flexible sandpaper; not something I would relish.
Thanks again for your input.
You can try the stripper one more time--be patient and let it work. Use some 00steel wool pad, opened out, to rub with the grain. And then you can bleach. If you continue using the scraper and sanding, you will remove all the patina from the wood. Be sure to neutralize/remove ALL the stripper with mineral spirits.
Allowing the stripper to do its work is the most important part of using it--keeping it wet ON the paint so it can lift it. Removing too soon just smears the paint further.
Thanks for your response. I'll give the paint remover a few more tries.
I ran into this on a piano. I switched to water based stripper (after methyl chloride) to remove the dye and covered the stripper with painters plastic for several days. Any dye that remained was removed with denatured alcohol and light sanding. I then applied a dye that was in the range of my stain color to even out the whole piece and applied the stain/finish.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Information from another responder leads me to believe that I am dealing with a pigmented stain, not a dye. He suggested using paint brush cleaner to loosen the remaining oil-based stain and then lightly sanding. This avoids the methyl chloride fumes from the paint stripper, and hopefully loosens the burnt umber particles sufficiently that they can be rubbed off with steel wool or scraped off with a scraper.
I Have a funrniture refinisher near me that has a big tank with water based stripper in it and whatever he puts in it comes out clean after so many hours. That's where I got the idea to use painters plastic to keep the stripper wet long enough to work.
You can use saran wrap to put over the paint to keep the stripper "wet" and not dry out.
I think there might be a chance that plastic drop cloth material may melt. What water based stripper? I hope it uses mineral spirits to clean it off.
Gretchen
Edited 2/21/2009 12:34 pm ET by Gretchen
You should be OK with polyethylene painter's plastic, but I wouldn't use Saran wrap. I'm pretty sure it's a different plastic composition and may melt in contact with a methylene chloride-based stripper.
While true that water-based strippers are getting better, they generally can't compete with methylene-chloride strippers when it comes to effectiveness and speed. So long as they're used outside in a well-ventilated area, there's little fear with respect to toxicity - finishing with solvent-based laquer is a lot more hazardous.
Having done it for a long time, Saran (the real Saran) will NOT melt even with MC strippers.Gretchen
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled