Our neighbor has collected antique furniture over the years and has many beautiful pieces. One of the pieces is an old, old gate leg table of oak. Prior to moving into our neighborhood she had the table “refinished”. I don’t know what it looked like before the refinishing, but it now looks like it has one or more heavy coats of varnish. The person who refinished the table said they had used tung oil. I thought that tung oil is used as a drying agent and is more of a penetrating type rather than a surface build finish.
Our neighbor doesn’t like the high gloss surface and I agree. What can she do to tone down the surface?
Jon
Replies
They probably used a product like Formby's Tung Oil finish which is very distinctly a varnish. The fix is to strip and refinish. See the coffee table thread in this same folder.
Thank you for your response. Would it be possible to go over the table with 0000 steel wool or equivilent 3M pad to tone down the shine and then put on a topcoat of shellac or some other finish?
Jon
Altering the sheen of a finish is simple but a little laborious.
The simplest way is to rub out with steel wool, anywhere from 0 to 0000 grade, depending on the topcoat and the sheen desired. You might want to start with the finest and work backwards till you get the amount of dulling you want. A lubricant such as Mohawk or Behlen's Wool Lube helps the steel wool cut faster and more uniformly. Mineral spirits also works. Do not use water with steel wool (rust).
Pumice and oil gives a great looking matte finish, but it would be hard to get out of the pores of the oak.
My preference these days is an abrasive pad called abralon, made, I think, by Mirka. Usable grits for rubbing finishes range from 500 to 4000 grit. 500 gives a very dull, matte finish, while 4000 gives a fairly glossy finish, just needing a buffing with a lambs-wool buffer to bring up a pretty good sheen. I wet sand using water with a couple of drops of clear dish soap as a lubricant. The pads ore flexible so you can pretty easily rub out turnings & moldings, too. Generally works faster and better than steel wool for me.
I do sheen adjustments almost every week lately, and there are a lot of other ways, but the above seem to best suit your situation.
Michael R
Woodwiz,
Thank you for your response on the antique table. I'll go over your suggestion to use abralon pads to tone down the heavy varnish finish with my neighbor. I believe it is the best option available.
The care and repair of antiques while maintaining the beauty, patina and structural soundness of a piece is somewhat new to me. I apologize for the delay in responding to your post as I've been busy out in my workshop and haven't been reading my mail.
Jon
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