Thread: Celery top pine chest restoration

It looks to me like it might have been finished with orange shellac originally. Have you tried using metho to see if it dissolves it at all?

As for sealer coats to overcome blotchyness with stains i've always found the best approach (when i've been stripping and refinishing light coloured Japanese chests and furniture) was to wet sand it with a couple of grades of steel wool or sandpaper, (with the grades of roughness dependent on the final finish i wanted).

Then brush on a coat of thinned blonde shellac with a consistency just slightly thicker than water. This will probably raise the grain, so rub it back with fine steel wool, and either stain from that point on, or, if you think it needs some more protection against uneven staining add another coat of shellac and rub back again and go from there.

Many thanks for the advice. I'll give it a go.

The two small drawers look like Huon Pine rather than King Billy Pine. If there is some Huon Pine in it you will find that because Huon is a very oily wood it darkens significantly with age. Personally, I think that is a good thing as it gives it character and patina, but each to their own. Shellac will seal Huon Pine too, though, over time, the oil affects the shellac and it can go crackly and lumpy (once again this is something that I like but not everyone may agree).

I have some Kauri Pine furniture (a table) and a Huon Pine boat which were painted and I have stripped them. In the case of the Kauri the stripping was aided by the shellac under the paint and some shellac remained. I re-coated the table with brown shellac and that gave some depth to the colour as well as bonding well with the remnant shellac. I didn't get every speck of paint off but I think it looks OK. I have it in my work office and many people admire it without even noticing those paint specks! The boat also has some paint specks remaining - it is incredibly difficult to remove all the paint from inside a clinker built dinghy. I coated the dinghy with a marine finish that also has some depth of colour and, like the table, most people do not notice the over-coated paint specks.

Good luck with it.

David

Many thanks, David,

I will not be trying for a perfect restore, and your advice has given me some heart.

Forgot to mention in my earlier post, wet sand it using metho and steel wool....not water...
The metho also seems to bleach the wood slightly depending on how aggressive you are with it, though i'd wager a decent part of that is simply due to it pulling some of the wood's oils off the surface as well as stripping out dirt from the old surface.

Thanks.

I'll give it a go.

Originally Posted by Xanthorrhoeas

The two small drawers look like Huon Pine rather than King Billy Pine. If there is some Huon Pine in it you will find that because Huon is a very oily wood it darkens significantly with age. Personally, I think that is a good thing as it gives it character and patina, but each to their own. Shellac will seal Huon Pine too, though, over time, the oil affects the shellac and it can go crackly and lumpy (once again this is something that I like but not everyone may agree).

I have some Kauri Pine furniture (a table) and a Huon Pine boat which were painted and I have stripped them. In the case of the Kauri the stripping was aided by the shellac under the paint and some shellac remained. I re-coated the table with brown shellac and that gave some depth to the colour as well as bonding well with the remnant shellac. I didn't get every speck of paint off but I think it looks OK. I have it in my work office and many people admire it without even noticing those paint specks! The boat also has some paint specks remaining - it is incredibly difficult to remove all the paint from inside a clinker built dinghy. I coated the dinghy with a marine finish that also has some depth of colour and, like the table, most people do not notice the over-coated paint specks.

Good luck with it.

David

Yes totally with Xanthorrhoeas on the Huon pine. The grain is quite definitely that of Huon, with almost elements of what they call 'Birds Eye". The rest of it looks to be more likely Kauri rather than Celery Pine. With shellac finishing on this, it will come up a treat.

In terms of stripping off the old finish metho and steel wool (coarse grade) will work fine, afterwards a light sand with 240 and 400 grade and you should be good to go in re-coating it. Once you have sufficient coats of shellac, a final cut back with 0000 superfine steel wool and bees wax polish and it should look and feel superb.

Thank you for that. I have tried one draw with the turps and sandpaper/steelwool and it is a great improvement. I'll keep going down this path, and then try out the finishing.
The advice and support of all is very much appreciated.

Ok, well done, just a quick thought regarding the use of Turps. It is fine if you have an oil based paint finish, but I would have thought not much use normally if it had a shellac finish. The other thing you might wish to consider regardless is that Turps might cause some problems regarding the adhesiveness/reaction if you are going to use shellac to refinish the chest with. My advice in that case, for what it is worth, is to give it a good wash/scrub if necessary with warm soapy water and clean that off/dry it off afterwards. You wouldn't wish there to be any issues of reaction between such materials.