I am redoing an old house and have the original baseboard and woodwork I’d like to strip and refinish.
There used to be a guy in town that did that kind of stripping that was very cost effective. He put the parts in a long tank of something and let it sit for several days, and the finish stripped right off. His business is closed up, though.
Any idea what kind of chemicals he would be using in that tank? I think it is a fairly common practice, and I’ve heard that it included alcohol. Anyone have any ideas?
Replies
Methylene chloride (paint stripper)? Denatured alcohol is for shellac, but MC does it all. Nasty stuff in bathtub quantities. Several days? That may be an urban myth -- it doesn't take that long, LOL! You can test the finish, first with denatured alcohol (dissolves shellac), then lacquer thinner (lacquer, surprise) and if that doesn't work, MC will be needed.
There are other options for things like molding and baseboard -- stuff you lay on, let it sit, and peel it off. I'm sure others will chime in here. You might want to post over in Breaktime also. Please remember, though: those solvents need to be disposed of responsibly, so if you do your own dip-stripping, be sure and plan for it. We have a hazardous household waste facility in our county.
PS: If you have anything that has a nice "patina" on it (usually furniture) or has veneer (ditto), dip-stripping is probably not the way to go. It's kinda like giving a nice finish a frontal-lobotomy.
forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 1/26/2004 1:06:59 PM ET by forestgirl
He probably Died...nasty stuff there.
Oregon_BoB,
Just to add a bit to FG's comments. If it has several coats of paint, varnish, etc. becareful that the cost of the solution does not exceed the cost of buying new. There is another old fashion cure.....using a bucket of water and a can of Drano. Just slosh it on good with a rag tied to the end of a stick....wear gloves...when it appears to be done..slosh on some water with vinegar to stop the action. Usually this method is applied outside on a warm day....
"Just slosh it on good with a rag tied to the end of a stick...." Yeah, a stick about 12' long. Nasty stuff. I'm going to type a longer-than-usual quote here, from Bruce Johnson in "The Weekend Refinisher." Any emphasis is added.
Not my idea of fun.forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
"In addition to burning off the paint, lye also burns out the life of the wood, raises the grain, removes the color from some woods, darkens others, such as oak, walnut, chestnut, and ash, and simply ruins cherry and mahogany.
I, of course, could not have said it as well. Anything that raises the grain of the wood will absolutely rob you of the wood patina that has happened because of the years. MC is nasty stuff but come on, it can be used judiciously. The OP seems to be willing to remove the woodwork in order to remove the finish (AND we haven't discovered whether it could be shellac--an easy job comparatively).
Lay the moldings outside on a table or sawhorses. Apply the stripper and then remove it with coarse steel wool (open out the pads to use the most surface area of it). AND when the finish is all removed wipe thoroughly with mineral spirits to remove ALL vestiges of the stripper.Gretchen
In all fairness, I don't think the OP is to be condemned yet. It's apparent he didn't have the knowledge of these strippers and their consequences to judge what the best approach would be, and what to avoid. So.........we ride to the rescue!!!!forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
I don't think the OP is to be condemned yet.
Oh, I didn't mean that at all--to the contrary, he is willing to remove the woodwork and strip it "somehow". As you say, we have disabused him of some of the less than gentle ways to do it and preserve it.Gretchen
Sorry, Gretchen, I misread you. I somehow interpreted the "remove the woodwork" quote as saying, tongue-in-cheek, he was willing to do away with the wood (figuratively speaking) in order to get rid of the finish. ROFL!! Baby-with-the-bathwater type stuff. Sorry!forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Bob,
Methlyne chloride is REALLY nasty stuff. If you are certain you want to expose yourself to this, it is best to work outside with a large fan behind you blowing the vapors downwind and away from buildings. Also, use the best gloves you can buy. DON'T get this stuff on your skin, and don't breathe it!
BJ
The commercial companies that I have seen either use Methelene Chloride which they pump over the wood rather than dipping.This seems very effective,But 55gall drums and fiberglass tank tablesare hardly for home use.Incidently MC and aluminium make an explosive mix!The dip strip companies use hot LYE, it ruins wood and makes glued furniture fall apart,But it works great on the old cast iron radiators.However, I use it hot and neutralize with Muriatic acid.NOT to be recommended, and a pill to dispose of as the sludge is laced with lead from the paint.My wife has stripped and refinished, in situ, our stair case and all the trim on the the 1st floor of our house which is chestnut using MC.She always works with powerful fans and remains upwind of the work.Organic vapour masks are not effective against MC
I think you'll find that most dip tanks these days use a mix of primarily methylene chloride and methanol. It works cold, but faster with a little heat. Not many (if any) of the over 100 refinishers I know use lye, for reasons well described above. Dip tanks are not such a great method for furniture, but work fine for architectural elements like wood trim, IF you want to take the trim down. MC strippers that are not boosted with alkali don't alter the "patina"of the wood. You could make a long, shallow sheet metal tray 9with lid) for soaking the trim that would not use much material. Professional strippers in 5 gallon pails can be had for around $6 or $7 a gallon.
I've done kitchen cabinets, wainscot, and trim in place. It's pretty labor intensive, but I just mask the wood off, apply a paste stripper (methylene chloride), let it work until ALL the layers of finish come off at once, and scrape the finish off with a dull metal or plastic scraper. Then I apply another coat of stripper, scrub with a stripping pad or BRASS wire brush, as appropriate, and wipe the stripper off with paper towels. Then I scrub with TSP and a brush, and rinse with clean water. This sounds like a lot of work, but it goes pretty smoothly. I experimented a lot until I settled on this system.
Methylene chloride requires caution, but is not extremely hazardous. The worst thing is that it irritates skin and lungs. Prolonged, chronic overexposure can damage liver, kidneys, and nervous system, but we're talking about a whole lot of exposure here. It will react with POWDERED aluminum and magnesium, as well as strong acids and bases, and is mildly flammable - a little less than paper, I'd say.
The worst effect of short term, severe overexposure is that MC will metabolize into carbon monoxide, causing carbon monoxide poisoning.
As long as you use it with good ventilation and keep it off your skin, it doesn't present much of a hazard in real world terms. Severe overingestion of water causes water poisoning (hyponatremia) and can be fatal. I still drink water (even though fish #### in it.) Actually, I think Methanol might be more hazardous than MC........
By the way, methylene chloride is 1.3 times as heaavy as water, and the vapors are much heavier than air. A good way of telling what stripper is the strongest is just to buy the heaviest can.
Flowover systems can be as simple as a sheet metal tray, an old sauce pan, and a five gallon can of stripper. I know a guy who made his living with just such a system for years, until he finally decided he was working too hard. It was on the cover of one of the first editions of Professional Refinishing magazine (now defunct). Ayway, they work great for stripping furniture; they work good and get the chemicals on and off the wood quickly.
Michael R
Heres a thought, i did a job a while ago on some shutters that were on a museum we couldnt use paint removers or any kind of machinery like that but we foiund that "Peal Away" worked pretty well. I'm not sure about the accessicility of it in your area but if you can find it it's definately a useful somewhat safe product , just use gloves It does take approx. 24 hrs to work
hope this helps....god luck
Hey Bob! Hello from Northern Oregon. :-)
I agree with the others that it was likely Methylene chloride-based stripper. One word of caution with that stuff, though. It can leave the stripped wood with a slight greenish coloration. I've used it many times and been quite happy with the results. But, I had a job last year where the client wanted a show door (trade show exhibit for a door manufactorer) stripped and refinished because a previous finisher had done a poor job color matching it to the rest of the already existing finished doors in the exhibit. Long story short... we sent it out to be commercially stripped because that was cheaper than paying me to strip it. But, the stripping left it slightly greenish in color... which wouldn't have been impossible to deal with (a dilute red dye would have neutralized the green) except that it also left it slightly darkened too. The net effect was that the wood (Alder as I recall) was too dark for me to color match with as the color I needed to match was lighter than the stripped wood. I sanded some of it off and was able to get to whiter wood relatively easily. The problem was that with all of the raised panels and mouldings, it would have taken a great deal more labor to properly sand down than the budget allowed for. We talked the client into shipping us a new unfinished door and it was soon finished and shipped out. I had been warned a couple years before by an oldtimer that the MC strippers can leave a green color in the wood. I didn't take him seriously until that door came back.
Just something to keep in mind when considering using MC to strip old finishes.
"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud" - Sophocles.
Thank you all for your advice. I may end up just using "formby's" or something similar. The stuff I'm looking to clean up only has a couple coats of clear finish on it.
My reason for pursing the dip & strip was that I will be staining this wood once it is stripped, and I wanted to make sure that all the nooks and crannys were stripped so that the stain would "take" evenly. Also, the idea of "dip it and forget it" appealed to me, having expended plenty of elbow crease and steel wool on previous projects.
All of your advice/warnings/critques are appreciated!
>> Also, the idea of "dip it and forget it" appealed to me, having expended plenty of elbow crease and steel wool on previous projects.
One of the mistakes everybody makes in stripping is not letting the stripper work. If you let the stripper work until it has completely worked through down to the wood, life gets a lot easier.
Even when hand stripping with paste stripper, you want to lay the stripper on as thick as you can. 1/8" thick is good. If the stripper starts to look dry, it is because it is soaking in, and you just add more stripper. You can also cover your work with plastic sheet while the stripper works.
It actully makes the job much harder trying to strip a layer at a time. Wait until everything comes off in one pass.
Michael R
Formby's may not work. If this is really old finish it may well be shellac--and Formby's may work--at a huge price. Check and see what the finish is from what was posted earlier in a post and then come back. Since it is a clear finish you don't have to use something like Formby's and pay a premium.Gretchen
Bob, have you done the solvent test to find out what kind of finish is on the wood? Also, if you're going to do the Formby's thing, there's a cheaper way -- you can make your own (assuming you mean a "refinisher" type solution).forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Forestgirl,
Please tell us the formula for a homemade refinisher. Would this be similar to Behlen's Qualarenu? (Wipe on, wait, wipe with the grain, let harden) I've not tried the Formby's. Thanks,
Ray
I just hope we're talking about the same thing here. I haven't bought any pre-made in eons, so don't remember what they call in the stores, but generically they're called "solvent refinishers." I think Formby was the first. They are simply a mixture of denatured alcohol and lacquer thinner, 50/50 works fine, and will cost you a fraction of the commercial version.
This stuff is not a "stripper" and will not work on polyurethane, paint or oil (you need methylene chloride for those). Shellac and lacquer dissolve. If you use it conservatively, you can remove dirt and part of the finish, while "redistributing" the remainder in such a way that the finish doesn't look "stripped" but is relatively clean and even, and the original stain and character of the wood remains. Then add your choice of new finish on top. Not necessarily a way to refinish fine antiques, LOL, but great for the vintage occasional table, bookcase, whatever.
It takes awhile to develop a technique, but read the instructions on the back of the Formby's can to get started.forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Thanks, I believe we're talking about the same thing. I'll give it a try.
Regards,
Ray
Yep, I found some info on the Qualarenu at Woodfinishes.com. The term amalgamator gives it away. Only part that's a bit curious is the instruction you indicated: "Wipe on, wait, wipe with the grain, let harden." That's real different from what I've done with the refinishing routine I usually do. It might work on surfaces that are ever so slightly alligatored, and there's certainly no harm in trying it. If it doesn't work, you can go back and be more aggressive, using the steel wool approach.forestgirl Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
>>The net effect was that the wood (Alder as I recall) was too dark for me to color match with as the color I needed to match was lighter than the stripped wood
If that ever happens again, a little oxalic acid will take the darkening out. The stripper used was probably "boosted" with alkali, which darkens wood. As for the greenish tint, the stripper was probably contaminated from previously stripped coatings. Methylene chloride alone doesn't do that, as far as i know.
Michael R
You may be right about that, Michael. Part of the problem I faced was that the stripper didn't remove all of the conversion varnish on the door. Had it simply been the darkened wood I might have used the Oxalic acid I keep in my mixing room. But, I knew that was pointless unless/until the wood was completely stripped. In this particular instance it was more cost effective to get the client to supply a new door and cut our losses on the old door, which was a warranty job due to the previous finisher having not done a good color matching job.
For what it's worth... I have some of the strong MC stripper here which I used to strip catalyzed finishes. It didn't seem to faze that old conversion varnish, though. I 'spose that's a good advertizement for Sherwin Williams' conversion varnishes since that's what was on the door. Anyway, it was after my stripper wouldn't easily remove the remaining finish that we opted to cut our losses with the door.
The Independent Voter.com
"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud" - Sophocles.
I must have missed the part about conversion varnish. The stripping company would probably have had to use an alkali boosted stripper to get conversion varnish off, hence the darkening. CV is still much harder to get off, no matter what stripper you use, but I think a professional stripper should have gotten it clean for you before he gave it back, and most people who use such chemicals know to use oxalic acid in their rinses.
I agree that it's often best to cut your losses & start over.
Michael R.
The "chemical police" took him away!!
OB,
Dip and strip guys use baths of Sodium hydroxide or basically lye. Then they clean of the paint and neutralize the alkali wood with a final dip in an acidic solution. Even vinegar will work. MC would evaporate so fast that these places would explode......plus nobody could afford vats of MC
Mike
>>Dip and strip guys use baths of Sodium hydroxide or basically lye. Then they clean of the paint and neutralize the alkali wood with a final dip in an acidic solution.
Some refinishers still use hot tanks with sodium hydroxide, but they are primarily used for architectural items like shutters and exterior doors that will be painted. They are too hard on the wood to be used for furniture, although a very few old timers still do.
Dip tanks that use solvent are called cold tanks, and they are expensive to fill, but they are a decent way of getting lots of dwell time with solvent strippers on hard to strip finishes. Lots of refinishers have them. I'm sure more furniture refinishers have cold tanks rather than hot tanks, although a big operation may have both.
>>MC would evaporate so fast that these places would explode......plus nobody could afford vats of MC
The MC stripper I use isn't even marked flammable. Plus, most strippers have a wax component that stays on top of the stripper and retards evaporation. If I use an MC stripper all day long in a flowover tank, I might go through four or five gallons.
Flowover systems are probably the most popular right now for general furniture stripping because they are quick and minimize the amount of time the chemicals are on the wood.
Try these websites if you want more info:
http://www.bencosales.com./tanks.htm
http://www.besway.com./stripping-chem.html
http://www.kwickkleen.com
Michael R
Mike ,
Thanks. The guys that I have used have done passage doors for our antique house. I started using Peel-Away so I could control how wet the wood got, and pay more attention to protecting molded edges etc. I have never had a piece of furniture dipped, since I'd be concerned about joinery glue failures.
Mike
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