Newsletter
February 1 2003

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February 1, 2003

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Quick tip

Plastic laminates are layers of paper which have been impregnated with resins. The top sheet of paper has the wood grain design that you see on your laminated table top or marble or other design on your kitchen counter tops. They're pressed with extremely high pressure and high heat to make a hard substance resistant to lots of liquids and minor bumps. Never use abrasive cleaners or pads to clean laminates, since it's easy to rub through the top layer. Although it's hard, it's still plastic and vulnerable to abrasives.

Musty Smell

email question.....

I got an old dresser from my Aunt. it is very musty smelling. it was in a basement for years. Is there a way to get the musty smell out. I have washed it with baking soda and water. I had it in my garage for several getting air. Then I put newspapers in the drawers.I had heard that the newspaper would absorb the oder. it still smells.

Any suggestions?

Thank you, myrna

Reply.....

The musty smell is probably mildew and it can be eliminated with laundry bleach. Use a solution of 1 part laundry bleach and 9 parts of water. Be sure that everything in the surrounding area is protected, because the bleach solution will take the color out of carpeting and your clothes and can be rough on many other things. It's best if you can work outside.

You can spray, brush or wipe the solution. The best way is with a pump spray bottle, like window cleaner and such things come in. With the spray you can get in all the nooks and crannies easier, where musty smells and mildew like to hide. Spray until the area you're spraying is damp, but not drippy wet. If you use a brush be sure to get into all the corners and crevices. The same with wiping with a cloth, get the out of the way places real good. You can squeeze the solution from the cloth to get into tight places. Let everything dry naturally.

You should wear protective gloves, because it's a pretty strong bleach solution and can cause problems with sensitive skin. Always wear eye protection when you're working with chemicals too. Some real strong protective gloves at a reasonable price, Nitrile gloves, are available here, as well as safety glasses and other safety equipment.

Be very careful to not get any bleach solution on the finish on the outside of the dresser.

Remove all the drawers and apply the bleach solution to all areas of raw wood inside the dresser. Apply to the drawers, inside and out, except for the finish. Case, total inside bare wood area. Mildew can occur on the finish too, but can get deeper into bare wood. If you have some sunshine peeking through in your area, put the case and drawers out in the sunshine for a few hours. Sunshine is one of the best odor eliminators there is.

Clean the finish on the outside with a good furniture cleaner and give the whole thing inside and out, including finish and bare wood, a good application of orange oil.

After the bleach treatment put the drawers back in and let the dresser sit for a day, then open a drawer and sniff. If the musty odor is still prevalent you'll need to repeat the bleach treatment before going on to the cleaning and orange oil.

Another good help is cedar drawer liners.

Quick tip

Neatsfoot oil is good for restoring brittle leather seats in antique chairs, or any other leather that has gotten hard or brittle from loss of it's oils due to exposure to the air. 100% neatsfoot oil is an animal product and is best used to replace the oils in leather. There are neatsfoot oil compound products, some of which use petroleum products and some use vegetable oil additives, but pure is best. Make lots of applications and let as much soak in as you can, letting it sit overnight with heavy coats. It's a good idea to give newer leather an application every few months to keep its oils. Test in an out of the way place, because neatsfoot oil will darken leather.

Dry air

Winter time and electric heat can be very hard on furniture. Electric heat evaporates moisture from the air and wood will try to stabilize itself to the surrounding environment, so it will dry out too.

Wood is normally pretty active anyway absorbing and releasing moisture throughout the day with cooking and showers, even in well vented houses, but that's just at surface level. The drying of the air by electric heat is similar to kiln drying your furniture and draws the moisture from deep in the wood.

A hygrometer is a good investment for both your furniture and yourself. It's an instrument similar in appearance to a thermometer, but it measures humidity instead of temperature. A hygrometer could not only help your furniture and your own comfort level, but could save you money in heating costs.

Use yourself as a test for your furniture's comfort. Do you feel uncomfortable and cold in the winter and you frequently turn up the thermostat to raise the room temperature? If so, when you first start feeling uncomfortable your furniture is too. When you start feeling warmer your furniture is about to hang it's tongue out in discomfort.

In the summer we release moisture as persperation as a cooling mechanism for our bodies to keep cooler. In the winter when we dry out the air in our houses with heat the dry air sucks moisture from our skin so it tends to cool us the same as the perspiring activity. If you turn on a humidifier and leave the temperature where it is you'll start feeling warmer, because the air is happy to get it's moisture from the humidifier rather than from you.

A word of warning, don't over humidify. Humidity comfort is at 40% to 60% and you're better off at the lower end of the comfort level, especially if you have allergies or asthma keep it just where you feel comfortable. Too much humidity can cause the growth of mildew and mold and it can happen in the hidden nooks and crannies inside your furniture and underneath low sitting pieces where air circulation is poor. This is where a hygrometer comes in handy. Hygrometers aren't very expensive, I bought a little plastic case one for $2.98 to make a comparison with our $50.00 brass and wood one. They both worked the same which would indicate that they were both measuring the humidity equally well.

You can help your furniture feel better with treatments similar to what you give yourself, only instead of using moisturizers and lotions your furniture would enjoy a good massage with orange oil. Lemon oil used to be the oil to use, but orange has better properties, so has become the citrus oil of preference. It isn't a matter of smell good or 'in vogue', there's a large amount of d-Limonene in orange oil and that, as well as the oil, is the stuff that has a lot of benefit to your furniture, because of it's cleaning powers. There are a lot of cleaners and other products that use orange oil and d-Limonene. We'll cover d-limonene another time for those of you who are interested in knowing why things do as they do, rather than just knowing you should use them. Don't throw your lemon oil out, use it up first, then make the transfer to orange oil.

You can purchase Orange Oil here from a reliable supplier who has been in business since the mid 1950's, has secure ordering and are generally good, all around friendly people to deal with.

Orange oil will penetrate natural finishes like lacquer and shellac and put an amount of oil back in the wood. Although polyurethane and other plastic type finishes can't be penetrated by any oils, you can put an application of orange oil on the underneath side of tables and anywhere else there is raw wood, like inside drawer openings and the bare wood on drawers. It not only adds oil to the wood, it smells good for a long time.

It's a good idea to give your furniture a good all over oil treatment three or four times a year.

Quick tip

When you dust your furniture avoid using a dry cloth, because dust is abrasive and you can leave very fine scratches in the finish. Use a damp cloth first, water not only holds the dust in the cloth, but it acts as a lubricant to keep the dust from scratching. After the dust is picked up you can wipe and buff with a soft dry cloth.

French polish (continued)

French polishing can cause you to heave a lot of sighs while you're learning it, but with practice you can master it nicely and have some exceptionally fine furniture finishes to your credit.

The first key to french polishing success is surface preparation. To get the depth of shine the surface has to be as glass smooth as possible. There are steps to take in the surface preparation for smoothness and then more steps are taken during the polishing procedure. Keep in mind that improper surface preparation is a guarantee of problems when french polishing.

You can generally french polish over an existing natural finish, such as lacquer, various types of oil, or shellac (shellac is the base for true french polish), but it generally won't work successfully over polyurethane, acrylic or other finishes of that type, because they have formed a thin sheet of plastic over the wood.

The existing finish should be cleaned with a good furniture cleaner, such as Prelude furniture cleaner. After cleaning, wet sand lightly with 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper with a few drops of water for a lubricant. Keep the residue cleaned as you go so that it doesn't have a chance to dry on the surface and cause you problems.

If you plan to french polish over a new lacquer finish, let the lacquer cure for several days before you french polish it.

Apply a good base of shellac over the existing finish. Apply three or four coats of one and a half or two pound cut shellac. More about the cut later. Don't sand until after you've built up the shellac thickness, then sand with 400 grit sandpaper and clean the surface well with a Tack cloth and it's ready for french polishing.

You can use french polish as a stand alone finish on new work. The surface will need more preparation than when you use a brush, wipe or spray on finish. The surface should be glass smooth. Generally the surface will be so smooth that it won't absorb much stain, so the french polish is best used on wood that has a nice appearance on its own and only needs a clear finish.

Unless you have strong arm muscles or want to build them up a finish sander such as the one shown will save a lot of time and energy.

If you're working with wood that has an open grain (loads of little elongated pits or cracks)you'll need to fill the grain so the surface is completely smooth. After initially sanding the wood with 180 grit sandpaper you can use a grain filler such as Wunderfil. It's a water base product and easy to use. Mix it with water according to the directions on the can and work it well into the grain of the wood with a cloth. Rub it in across grain, then with the grain, let it dry and sand it smooth with 220 grit sandpaper.

If you are working with other woods sand the complete new wood surface with 180 grit sandpaper, then 220 grit, then 400 grit. Wipe the surface with a water dampened sponge, which will raise little wood hairs, then resand with 400 grit, then a final sanding with 600 grit sandpaper. If you want to see if you can add a little contrast to the grain pattern with stain you should use only a good oil stain and wipe the excess very thoroughly. There are some water base stains that are formulated to act the same as oil base with good application properties, but you can generally figure on a few little wood hairs being raised from the water base, which will mean another sanding with 600 grit, which could mean sanding off any color that might have been added.

If you're planning to be a french polish purist or you're a glutton for punishment the surface is ready for french polishing. If you'd rather have some time to dunk an extra donut or read a good book you can give the wood surface three or four coats of one and a half or two pound cut shellac. Don't sand until after you've built up the shellac thickness, then sand with 400 grit sandpaper and clean the surface well with a tack cloth. Your ready to french polish your new wood surface.

If you buy ready mixed liquid shellac check the date on the can. If it isn't very recently fresh don't buy it or if the date is a code that you can't make out, don't buy it. If the clerk says that there are new processes or that the can hasn't been opened so the deterioration hasn't started or any other sales hype, give him the fish eye and don't buy it. Shellac has a definite shelf life after it's mixed and as time goes on it will take longer to dry. Pre-mixed shellac should be thrown out after about a year, because it becomes unreliable.

When you french polish, especially just learning the procedure you want to have the most fresh shellac you can have and you want to have every advantage in your favor. The best thing is to purchase Shellac flakes and dissolve your own to be sure that you have the absolute freshest and most reliable shellac possible. Shellac flakes don't lose their drying ability, it's only after they've been dissolved in denatured alcohol that process begins.

We've come to the end of time and space for french polish for this newsletter, we'll continue next time.

Refinishing tools

Our refinishing tools were thought to be quite primitive by most refinishers, especially those with flow systems and other such amenities, but our first thought was what was best for the furniture we worked on, rather than what we could do to make our lives softer and the least you can do with the least amount of chemicals to accomplish your goal is best for the furniture. Of course we made it as soft as we could under those circumstances. Not counting tools, I think our most expensive finish removal equipment was large stainless steel mixing bowls, 18 inch and 12 inch. The stainless steel was easy to keep clean and would last for years.

I made tables and cut round openings in them just smaller than the widest part of the bowls and set the bowls in them. We kept stripper in the bowls and had just enough table top space to work on small pieces of furniture, drawers and other small things. The rest was done on the floor.

Thrift stores are the best place to find most of the other necessary equipment, like cookie sheets, small metal pails (lots of them with sea shells and shovels in the kids section), brushes of various sorts and anything else that looks like it would work and be handy. If you buy things with painted decoration remove the decoration before you use them so that you don't get paint flecks from your equipment. The same with brushes, if you buy used paint brushes for use in removal make sure there aren't any paint flecks in them. Never use used brushes for final clear finishes, unless you bought it new and then only used it for clear finishes. If a paint brush has been used for paint, no matter how well you clean it, there's always one fleck of paint that will end up in the middle of your new clear finish.

Another plus of used stuff is that when it gets gucky and it will get gucky, you can throw it away and get more.

Quick Tip

Check the feet on your computer equipment sitting on your desk, they may need new shoes. Plastic and rubber can damage the finish over a period of time. There are little self stick felt dots of various sizes available at most department stores. Stick the felt pads onto the plastic or rubber feet. You should move your equipment an inch or so once a month so that the feet don't sit in the same place all the time. Be sure to turn your computer off before you move it so you don't damage the hard drive.

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