What is Best to Use on Antique Furniture?

[TuckerTavern]

how do you get oil out of oranges and lemons anyway ? I think they are more acidic? it must be a marketing scheme.

I can answer that, the same way that you get any essential oil. It's a laborious, expensive process that eats up lots of the raw material, for instance to get rose essential oil you need 50 roses to make 1 drop of E.O.

http://www.gazettenet.com/home/9115348-95/essential-oils-a-booming-business-but-may-not-be-good-for-the-planet

[phil]

the article kind of flies in the face of herbal retail outlets that promote natural products like the "body shop"
I wonder if the product referred to as "orange oil" is likely some other substance with orange scents added. Many products like "fast orange" use them and many of those skin and hand cleansers are the scope of a different environmental disaster in the making, the tiny plastic beads that the sewage plants can't filter out . in which they talk of banning.

[kelt65]

the article kind of flies in the face of herbal retail outlets that promote natural products like the "body shop"
I wonder if the product referred to as "orange oil" is likely some other substance with orange scents added. Many products like "fast orange" use them and many of those skin and hand cleansers are the scope of a different environmental disaster in the making, the tiny plastic beads that the sewage plants can't filter out . in which they talk of banning.

Not sure, there's lots of oils in citrus rinds. It's not in the fruit itself of course.

Actually orange oil is a byproduct of orange juice production. Don't forget citrus oils are excellent natural cleaners, just not good furniture polish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_oil

Mint oil is also very useful, insecticide, etc.

[Al F. Furnituremaker]

Most of the off the shelf grocery store and junk-in-the-box store "miracle cures" don't have in them what the name may imply. I have a basic rule in my shop. If I don't know what is in it and the tech support won't tell me, I don't use it. Gobbly gook from the marketeers doesn't cut it with me.

A good example that has nothing to do with furniture is the very poplar Shellac finger nail polish. There is not a drop of shellac in it. It is just marketing BS, along with most other consumer products.

[phil]

Its difficult to tell which furniture polished contain silicone so I am scared of pretty much all of them. those marketing gurus should put ingredients on the can but there is no law forcing them.

I spoke to a friend that said he was sending doors out to a place that would dunk them in tanks of stripper, but he said they stopped doing it because sooner or later they would get an item with silicone in it and it would then contaminate the whole vat, then subsequent customers would have complaints of fish eyes and the only solution was to dump the vat of stripper which gets expensive.

Phil

[Al F. Furnituremaker]

Right on about silicone. (Pledge, etc.)

Dip stripping is absolutely the worst way to remove finish. It not only removes the finish, but the glue in the joints also. I've also seen wood ruined by it's strength where the wood actually split in many places along the grain. Quick, but not good for the item. Don't do it.

[phil]

how about blasting with media? dry ice or walnut shells? not thinking for furnituere but baseboards and casings and doors and such? I realize the process will dig out soft parts of the grain but otherwise has this been a successful process?

[Al F. Furnituremaker]

Any media will remove the paint/finish, but it will also remove detail (if there is any). By that I mean sharp edges mostly. This will reduce the shadow effect and make the molding look plainer. Shadows are important.

I do mine by hand. Strip with chemical stripper, brush with stiff synthetic brush to remove stripper and old finish/paint. Clean with lacquer thinner and stiff brush. Sand carefully.

[phil]

pretty much what I do too but I have a bunch of painted baseboards and stuff to do. there really isn't much detail, I could run it through a thickness planer and re-cut the roundover but I don't really like running paint through the planer, it gums it up too much so I'd still have to get the bulk off with heat gun. I have quite a few painted fir doors. I guess Im not looking forward to breathing the paint or chemicals and looking for an easier way.

heavy sanding or planing thins them a tiny bit but it is pretty easy to just build out the backside to compensate. easier than nit picking every crack where the white remains. the problem is that the boards aren't really exactly flat due to normal distortion through time. that's where I loose the bulk of the material if I do it that way. of course I can't run a door through the planer..
I think most of mine has shellac under the paint so that to me shows paint isn't original and it will help with heat gun stripping so maybe I just need to wait till it's warm and take it outside. maybe a day per door or so..

I have heard of some , especially people with a thickness planer but no jointer, that have taken to using a backer board ( or sled) and using hot melt glue to stick a board to the backer temporarily. then they run the board through like that to get one flat side and break the glue, flip the board and now they have one true side for the thickness planer to work properly.
I have done that to plane stuff really thin and it's kind of a neat trick. it can also be used to plane boards with a bit of a warp without excessive wood removal. of course if you take a board like a baseboard with a little twist and joint and plane it until it's flat you'd be lucky to end up with a 1/2 inch of material so you can really only plane flat ones.

as far as building up the backside , I think that works pretty well. the joint isn't too noticeable. if you go to replace a bunch of 1 inch baseboards you'd need to buy 5/4 to get 1 inch finished but 3/4 inch ( sold as 1x 8 etc.. ) is common so probably half the price.

[kelt65]

pretty much what I do too but I have a bunch of painted baseboards and stuff to do. there really isn't much detail, I could run it through a thickness planer and re-cut the roundover but I don't really like running paint through the planer, it gums it up too much so I'd still have to get the bulk off with heat gun. I have quite a few painted fir doors. I guess Im not looking forward to breathing the paint or chemicals and looking for an easier way. .

Phil have you tried soy gel stripper? It seems to stay wet and last a longer time than the regular stuff, I've left it on for a day testing it out and was still wet, and took off about 6 layers of paint. Doesn't smell much, either. Cleans up with water.

I'm going to paint my trim with milk paint to thwart folks like you.