How to Remove White Rings & Haze From Finishes and Furniture

white rings in an old finish are some of the nastiest looking problems but sometimes some of the easiest to repair there are a lot of different things that people have used and recommended to try to remedy this everything from mayonnaise to cigarette ashes and all these oil blends and all these mystery solutions to try to wipe on the surface um many of them are pretty damaging and most of them are not very effective I'm going to show you the way that I've been taught that's a very effective and safe way to handle it uh pretty quickly and pretty easily so before we can treat this we need to understand what is actually going on in the surface if you look here you'll see all the white that's coming through and how on the edges it's pretty milky looking what you're actually looking at is moisture trapped in this finish to help you understand how this works I can I'll tell you how I created this sample board this old finish was pretty deteriorated pretty old and I took a cup of boiling water and pour P it on the surface and then set the cup right on there after a few minutes this is what you're seeing uh many of us experienc this by just putting a a warm cup of tea on an old table you'll start to see that bloom that blush sometimes it'll disappear after a few minutes but in extreme cases like this it remains so to understand how to remove the moisture that's trapped in the Finish we need to understand a little bit about the makeup these finishes this finish is soluble in ethanol I determine this by taking a cotton swab and testing with alcohol and just in an inconspicuous Place giving a little wipe if it gets tacky I know I'm dealing with something that's alcohol soluble shellac is a very common finish but other finishes also would be soluble in alcohol if this is the kind of finish you're dealing with an old alcohol soluble finish you can easily deal with this by introducing alcohol to the surface you're res saturating the Finish to allow the moisture to come back out if we think back to the big principles applying alcohol to the surface of an old finish sounds pretty intrusive and it is so we want to start back at the beginning what is the least intrusive way we can introduce alcohol to the surface without actually touching the surface if we didn't have to touch the surface that would be ideal so my mentor Don Williams uh came up with this method for a long time this is what he used Don taught me that if we can introduce alcohol Vapors to the surface then we wouldn't need the solvent to actually touch so for a long time he advocated for using something just as simple as a yogurt tub taking some cloth and wading it up maybe using fishing line or something to tie it up in there just to make sure it doesn't fall and you could get it a little bit wet with alcohol and then set it over the surface what you're doing then is you're creating a micro chamber where you're you're creating a vapor chamber so that the moisture can come out the risk with this is that alcohol can drip out of the rag or this could fall on the surface which would be really detrimental that would be a bad day when that happens so um this could only be undertaken with a lot of care and experience and I wouldn't generally recommend this for people to try out so another way to introduce Vapors into this scenario without actually touching is to use hand sanitizer hand sanitizer is basically nothing more than gelled alcohol that's what you want to do the gel suspends the solvent so that it doesn't evaporate as readily and so that it doesn't seep so you could get fancy and go to conservation supplies and and suppliers and try to get these different uh jelling agents to add into different solvents um but this is something that's uh available all over the place and it's really cheap and easy so I show you how this works you'll notice down here we'll do this one in the middle to start you see this this Milky area and I take this shop towel and for for this for these shop towels the thickness they are I've determined that four folds is good you could do more you could fold it again or six you would want to test this on a piece that's not uh special to you first so what we're going to do is we're going to use these towels as a barrier so they're going to prevent any solvent from touching the surface and the gel is going to keep it up above the towels before I apply this I have a timer here I don't allow myself to do this treatment unless I have a timer because it's so easy to walk away and forget or be doing something else and then if you leave this sit for a few hours you've just you've just dissolved that finish into this and you have a real mess on your hands so every time I do this I have a digital timer right next to it so the first thing I do is I apply the hand sanitizer onto a towel away from the object and I'm just going to do a little tiny little tiny section so that you see where it's effective and where it's not so I'll put it right off to the side so you can see here's what it looks like before and I'm going to set that there and I'm going to set the timer for one minute I'll do one minute at a time after a minute I'll check if it needs more I'll put it back and allow it for another minute there's sort of a plateau where it hits four or five times and you start realizing maybe this isn't going to be be any more effective okay so that was our first minute let's see what happened you see that right in the center so this is the area I had the alcohol it wet the finish it it redissolved the Finish just ever so slightly it's not sticky right now it's totally dry but it was just enough to allow the moisture to come back out and then when I pulled it back off it was totally fine so when I do treatment like this I would just make a puddle bigger bigger than the the area if you if you work it too long it can get you can possibly change a little bit of gloss so anytime you're doing anything like this it may be a little bit glossier and in that case you would have to deal with deal with the surface with steel wool and wax and I'll show you that uh when we go to the next level okay so that worked pretty good and I'm pretty happy with that I think we'd be able to deal with that ring at least uh with that method that's great if it doesn't work if it's not quite up to what you need if it's not quite effective you still see a little bit of Milky uh left the next level you'd want to go to is by actually applying the solvent to the surface so we would take a cloth with alcohol and ever so slightly I just want to I touch this in the back of my glove and I kind of want it to be wet maybe a little less than like a dog's nose so a little bit drier than that not much at all we really don't want to apply a lot of wet liquid we're just trying to introduce it ever so slightly so I would airplane down and up like this so I come down just barely touch it and back up and because shellac and these kinds of resins drop very very quickly because of the alcohol you don't want to stop and let it smear around it it get stuck really quick so this is a very quick wipe and you can see how it's introducing gloss back in it's almost as if you applied this finish for brand new so this if that's the case and and you wanted it to look back like this a real matte finish you would have to rub it out with steel wool and wax so you can see that was very effective as well sometimes in extreme cases I've in my experience I've seen you can apply that solvent right to the surface and it looks like it may work a little bit but as soon as it evaporates it's still subtly under the surface in that case I I have found sometimes applying fresh shellac to the surface will sort of it'll hold that it'll lock that in for for whatever reason it holds it really well this would be the the the most intrusive way to work besides actually stripping the piece because you're adding material to the piece so if you can do it without even touching it that's great you can touch it with solvent that's a little more intrusive and then actually adding finish should be the next level and if that doesn't work you're looking at uh potentially refinishing it so this is this is very very similar to applying the alcohol but this is this is a related technique to French polishing this is more French padding it's just applying it very gently and so I just apply this into the pad here and you don't want it very wet but you want it to be again like like a dog's nose you know so it's not dripping and so you can see the shellak is remaining here and so I would in that case then just come back and pad and you can see how it changes could do a little more a few more drops so that works pretty well I will give one word of caution about this though if this is a historically important finish or something you want to preserve adding new shly back into an old shellac finish is really not a reversible treatment so if it is an important uh piece that would be a a relatively intrusive treatment that you may want to consult a conservator before doing so this is a a very straightforward way to deal with it it gives you four options and how to deal with it and um everything up to refinishing but uh I always recommend starting with the least intrusive and easiest first

Channel: Popular Woodworking

Views: 649,483

Keywords: Popular, Woodworking, white rings, hazing, finish repairs, josh klein, furniture finish repairs

Id: CAPrChLnqN4

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2017