Mitigating Water Stains in an Antique Tabletop - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson Thomas Johnson antique furniture restoration in Gorham named this is a nice old drop-leaf table it's a gateleg table and I think the top appears to be made of birch it seems to be very old I might get a better idea when I'm working on it but it certainly appears people the base is made of various fluids before certainly gives the impression of being very old a big single kind of crude dovetail this tables been refinished before and the main thing that complained that the customer has now is just this surface here it's been very very badly stained so what I'm going to do is refinish the top I'm gonna try not to sand this top very much I'm gonna sand it some and hopefully some exotic acid will take these stains out and then I'll refinish the whole top and make it look a lot better I can see that there's a new screws holding this top on to the base I also see cutouts here four hinges right away it makes you makes you think well the the tops not original to this base the top seems sturdy on the space I think I'm going to not take this top off I'm just gonna take the leaves off it doesn't seem like an old screw the top of it looks old but the threads and certainly is a modern Scoob I want to make sure that these screws go back into the same holes when I go to put it back together I noticed when I was carrying these leaves over it's got a loose joint here this could be tough to clamp on I'm gonna see if I can clamp it but there's so much tension there I can see that I might just have to put a real thin wedge in there well it's coming together here but that needs a tremendous amount of force there's a lot of resistance to it coming together so I think I'm going to yeah I'm gonna add an additional clamping setup here further out for the second joint and I'm gonna make even though the block I found seemed to work okay I'm gonna make I need another block for the second client I'm gonna make some blocks that are a little bit better to clamp against I also think that because of a tremendous amount of tension in these areas then I'm going to use epoxy to glue these back together I don't think the regular glue would hold it I'm just not sure I can't clean these joints out you know perfectly I clean them as much as I can I can mix up epoxy this color and I think it'll work out really well though the center section of the table here has cracks in it but I don't see any movement at all so I'm just gonna try to work around those so the next step is to tape off the base so that I can strip the top just a word about plastic in the use of plastic I hate using plastic we're trying to cut down everywhere we can as you can see I've already used this plastic for one project I'm using it for another project here and I'll keep using it until I absolutely can't use it anymore and at least for right now it doesn't start so I've got a lacquer thinner here and number one steel wool and there's not a lot of finish on here I don't know what's on here but I'm gonna see if I can just take it off with lacquer thinner as opposed to using a stripper the lacquer thinner is doing a great job taking to finish right off of here and so now I'll get some clean lacquer thinner and a clean rag you just do it one more time and we'll see what happens all right I'm going to sand this now just by hand and I'm going to sand it with a hundred I don't like sanding antique tables with a hundred but it's going to sand it lightly by hand I want to cut through just a very young topmost surface but I really want the exotic acid to be able to bite it where these stains are always a good sign when the marks actually start to fade somewhat immediately sanding now bear in mind even though I'm sanding with 100 I am NOT trying to send out any defects any unevenness I want all that stuff to say I like the the local sawdust on getting here like I said I just want to clean off microscopic surface so that the water into which the exotic acid will be mixed can penetrate boiling water exotic acid the measurements don't matter I'm making a supersaturated solution sometimes when you put the exotic on you'll see the black marks and watermarks go away instantly which is always really great it's not happening here but you know I'll let this dry completely and then we'll see what happens this bit about two hours and I can still see some of the darkness through here is kind of hard to tell because there's the exotic is all over but I don't think it's dry yet I may just wait overnight okay this is dried overnight I'm going to rinse it off well the stains did not go away completely they're substantially lighter they're not black anymore I'm going to let this dry I mean stick it outside in the Sun let it dry off and then later I'll sand it again and then decide whether I'll treat it again or not all right well the table top is drying outside as I walked by this leaf I have noticed that the crack has opened up again I'm glad I used epoxy because it's at least it's not moving I've had a piece of maple veneer here I'm going to way even make it a little thinner wedge-shaped and then insert that to the crack with some high blue all right I've just brought this back in from outside it's good dry it looks fantastic the stains are really really light you know in fact it works so well I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sand this again try to kick up a little sawdust with the 100 once again being sure I don't want to change the character of this but I feel like I want to stand it one more time and I'll treat it again and let's just see if we can get it even better sometimes if you can just break up these little circles a bit even if they're not completely gone if they no longer look like circles that will that will be enough it'll won't be so distracting okay the spots you know lighten up some as you saw I'm gonna treat it again I'm gonna use the same exotic I used yesterday it's amazing you can see how much has come out of solution I'll heat it up in the microwave and see if I can get it to resolve ok the exotic readily read assault in the microwave so here we go again I'll go back and give the worst areas here kind of an extra dose alright that's good have these spots when they were wet don't look that much better but anyway I'll let this dry and we'll see you tomorrow okay round two let's ice this off and see what it looks like well at first glance it it doesn't look that much different than yesterday but maybe we will but I'll stick it outside on bright sunshine today let it dry see what happens all right the table top has been outside the Sun it's all dry it looks great of the mark sugar very light however we know from when it was wet that they're gonna show a little bit more i've talked this over with the owner of this table and we're not gonna go any further with these marks I'm gonna say this with 115 and I'm gonna seal it with a coat of garnet shellac okay I'll stand up now we need to match the existing leaves I know it had pretty good color when it was wet I don't think it's necessary to stain this wood I don't think I would work very well maple doesn't take stain very well I think what I'm going to do is seal this with garnett shellac which is a dark shellac let's just try a little bit first here see what it looks like and yeah it's it's it's definitely a good place to start as it may be it actually that's great whether shall I try so fast that looked great when it was wet but actually you could see now that the color is really good I'm gonna finish this with the tung oil varnish I'm anticipating having to tint the varnish a little bit but the way this looks right now it looks great the shellac is really soaking in the stains are still there they're not looking too bad all right the shellac is dried all night it looks really good the spots are all still there of course but greatly lessened in intensity I'm gonna stand this with 320 ok I'll sand it I'm going to blow it up I'm gonna wipe this off with this product I buy it's called wax Wash remover and it's kind of like paint thinner it'll clean them dust off here but also it's designed to remove any contaminants like silicone contamination that might be on the surface you'll notice I'm going to just wipe in one direction and turn the rag so I never yeah wipe over an area noters try not to if there is contamination you don't want to spread it around so do one swipe at a time now I'll apply my first coat of tung oil varnish the colors not bad tomorrow will decide if I want to add any color to the next coat all right so uh 24 hours has gone by coat went down pretty good you can you know it still got Ares that lemony - it definitely needs more coats this is pretty thin finish and like I said yesterday this is definitely Oringer than this you can it always helps you know it's obvious it's orange it always helps to use my little color card lay it on there really look at what you're dealing with here it's a little tough there's so much variation throughout this table but definitely I got to tone down that orange I think I'm going to add a little raw umber oil stain to the Mexico to finish I'll experiment a little bit to see first I'll go over this with just well 320 again just like well it definitely kills the orange and brown sit up I hope that it's not too much I'm thinking maybe I should thin it out with a little more finish maybe I put a little too much stain in there I think I will although when I as I Pat it off here I think it looks good maybe that's what I should do brush it on and Pat it off no it's uh it's not like it's an exact match but it's just so hard to say there's so much variation and figure in the leaf and this is like really different wood but I like it at least it's not more orange than that when you're trying to match colors or make things go together the most important thing is that this is not redder than that or Archer than that I think I kind of like this then you go Pat a little bit more I'll do the other half and it's got a really nice color to it I think it'll work well alright I'll let this dry and evaluate but looking from here to there I like what I'm saying okay try it overnight now I notice standing from this direction the center section is a lot better but it's still a little armed gee maybe a little more yellow but looking this way it just looks really good there's so much variation in this table I think I'm gonna leave it alone I put my final clear coat on I'm just going to go over this very lightly with some 5-hundred paper before I put on what I hope is the final coat on this top I'm gonna finish my touch-up work and clean these and give them a light sanding and give them a final coat at the same time not a final coat the only coat they're gonna get and now I'm going to clean both leaves and sand them lightly with 320 now I'm going to wipe these off with the all right I've left these dry overnight I'm gonna see if I can rub them out with some steel wool and wax the top has it doesn't feel perfectly smooth has a little nits in it so first I'll go over it with a piece of craft paper this one customer paperback now go over it with dry steel wool for our steel wool so what this dry steel wool is doing I'm just kind of evening this out remember these two leaves I just put a single coat on there's a few spots where maybe the finish was a little thin I'm definitely not going to put another coat on them but this dry steel wool evens him out so now I'm going to continue with the four wrought steel wool but I'm going to use it with the beeswax orange oil polish just an aside here when you're looking at the underside of the table you can often get a lot of really good hints or more than a hint as to what the original color probably was like you could see that right here on underside of this leaf in this board well there we have it a very nice antique gateleg table there wasn't a whole lot wrong with it except for the center section here it was a mess with some really bad black stains this is a good lesson in you know when you have to refinish an antique I couldn't get rid of those marks I tried with exotic acid they greatly lessen they did not go away and I'm glad I didn't know anything else because ultimately these marks really helped it to look like the rest of the table and it came in the colors good I have about twelve and a half hours in this project and I think it looks pretty good you

Channel: Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

Views: 563,287

Keywords: Thomas, Johnson, Antique, Furniture, Restoration, Gorham, Maine, Southern, ME, Greater, Portland, Boston, MA, Newton, Mass, water stains, tabletop, table top, water stains antique tops, water stain removal, removing water stains, oxalic acid, antique gateleg table, gate leg table, gateleg table

Id: 7oIhntH9cpE

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019