Stripping wood stain varnish

[Maxx02]

Today I've watched a number of YouTube videos on how to strip furniture (chairs in my case). As they all American videos, they use (unavailable here) American products including oven cleaner. Today I bought a Bondall product from Bunnings and ended up with a sticky mess. Can anybody recommend an Aussie video and Aussie products to easily strip wood back to its near normal wood fresh state please?

[Leiothrix]

Soda blaster?

It makes a bit of a mess though.

[jack620]

Today I bought a Bondall product from Bunnings and ended up with a sticky mess.?

If it was the water-based "safe" paint stripper, they are useless. Unfortunately you have to go nuclear and use the old-school stuff:

Just a moment...

It also leaves a sticky mess, but it works. I wipe off the gunk with rags soaked in copious amount of metho. Wear gloves! Not the thin blue disposable ones- the vapours go right through those and burn your skin.

[Maxx02]

If it was the water-based "safe" paint stripper, they are useless. Unfortunately you have to go nuclear and use the old-school stuff:

Just a moment...

It also leaves a sticky mess, but it works. I wipe off the gunk with rags soaked in copious amount of metho. Wear gloves! Not the thin blue disposable ones- the vapours go right through those and burn your skin.

Yes I have been using "safe" stuff because I wanted low fumes. The weather is to lousy & unpredictable to do the stripping outside. I saw the product you recommended at Bunnings but passed on it. I'll go back & try again gloved up. Thanks for the info.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Do you have any idea of the age of the chairs, whether their finish is original and any guess as to just what the finish is?

Or have the chairs been repainted at some time and you wish to remove the paint?

If you go back far enough, to the days when shellac was king, all you really need is metho and a lot of patience.

Modern finishes are often PolyUrethane (or similar) based and tend to require more... chemical solutions.

In the time-span between, oiled finishes were quite popular on quality furniture and they sort of fall in-between the above two when it comes to removal. Metho works, but tends to be very time consuming. Strippers work but tend to be rather nasty to use. Neither approach will "fully" remove all the finish as oils penetrate into the surface and aren't easily removed without heavy sanding, etc.


Personally I dislike using strippers and prefer hand scraping but that's labour intensive and, while with practise can be as fast as using strippers, I doubt it meets your requirement of "easily."

Although I'd also argue that strippers won't & don't meet your desire for bringing wood back to "it's near normal wood fresh state" unless you count sanding (or hand scraping!) afterwards as part of the process anyway.

[Maxx02]

I'd say the chairs are from the 6os or 70s as they are made in Japan not China. There is a John Martins store sticker on the underside that has a 5 figure phone number. That alone makes it old to me.

I'm continuing stripping & sanding for now.

Do you have any idea of the age of the chairs, whether their finish is original and any guess as to just what the finish is?

Or have the chairs been repainted at some time and you wish to remove the paint?

If you go back far enough, to the days when shellac was king, all you really need is metho and a lot of patience.

Modern finishes are often PolyUrethane (or similar) based and tend to require more... chemical solutions.

In the time-span between, oiled finishes were quite popular on quality furniture and they sort of fall in-between the above two when it comes to removal. Metho works, but tends to be very time consuming. Strippers work but tend to be rather nasty to use. Neither approach will "fully" remove all the finish as oils penetrate into the surface and aren't easily removed without heavy sanding, etc.


Personally I dislike using strippers and prefer hand scraping but that's labour intensive and, while with practise can be as fast as using strippers, I doubt it meets your requirement of "easily."

Although I'd also argue that strippers won't & don't meet your desire for bringing wood back to "it's near normal wood fresh state" unless you count sanding (or hand scraping!) afterwards as part of the process anyway.

[Darklord]

Sorry if this is a bit late, but it might be of help for future restoration and finishing work if needed.

The Aussie finishing bible "A Polishers Handbook" will give you a heap of information about stripping, etc. and it's all also good old Australian info.

I've had 3 of the 5 updated ones and it's a little ripper. The first one was after completing a weekend workshop in 1989 the last was early this year with the new binding.

The book covers everything from stripping to full blown finishes. Written by the Benevolent Dictator. Use it regularly, worth every penny and highly recommended.

Darky

[D.W.]

Yes I have been using "safe" stuff because I wanted low fumes. The weather is to lousy & unpredictable to do the stripping outside. I saw the product you recommended at Bunnings but passed on it. I'll go back & try again gloved up. Thanks for the info.

if you have a garage, do the work at the garage door with a fan fairly far into the garage to give a gentle breeze out.

The environmentally friendly stuff can do a good job only if it's lucky enough to be matched to destroying some bonds in finishes. I haven't had any luck with any of it, either. The stuff sold as "stripper" here that says it will strip varnish is usually pretty good (I'm in the states) and it won't burn your skin immediately or anything, but if you leave it on, you'll feel it start to get warm on a spot and it's obviously a good idea not to leave it on skin.

Unfortunately, the containers now aren't that easy to tell apart and I'm making varnish as a hobby, including japanning. The "not environmentally friendly labeled" but still reformulated advertises that it strips paints and stains, but the word Varnish isn't on the label. It does nothing to varnish or japanning (which is essentially a varnish with a resin that comes from the ground instead of trees or synthetics replacing tree bits).

[jack620]

When buying paint stripper I ignore any marketing blurb on the label and just look for methylene chloride (dichloromethane) as the active ingredient.

[auscab]

I use this stuff. It works well and comes in smaller sizes than 20 liter.

Anchor One Shot Paint Stripper 20L

[ubeaut]

I'll 2nd what Auscab said above.

For what it's worth... I used to purchased the cheapest nastiest stripper and brushed it on then cover it with cling wrap which excluded the air from it and made it work more efficiently on almost everything except for *&&#@ water based poly and 2 part epoxy.

Cheers - Neil