Dealing with Water Rings on Wood Furniture

Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays are right around the corner, and that usually means lots of use for your dining room table.  Sometimes an unfortunate spill happens, and that is just fine, as long as the liquid

gets cleaned up right away. If it doesn't then it can result in some unsightly damage to your table top.  Not to worry, there are still ways to solve this kind of damage, as long as you get to it quickly.  If it takes to long, and the ring turns black, then you know the water damage has gone all the way through the finish and into the wood.  At that point, your only way to repair the damage is to strip and refinish the piece.  But if you can get to it while the ring is still white, then the moisture is still in the finish and can be repaired.

You will need just 3 things to get rid of that water ring.  

1.You will need a piece of soft cotton (like and old T shirt)

2.You will need Liberon 'Ring Remover'.  We sell it here at our shop, or you can get it online.

3.Lots of Elbow Grease.

Once you have assembled these items,  this is how you go about getting rid of that evidence of a holiday party gone wild.  Take your piece of cotton and pull all the edges around into the center so that you have a ball of cotton that is smooth on one side, grasp the not smooth side with your hand.  Apply the ring remover tho the smooth side of the cotton, smack it with your hand a few times to spread the product through the cotton, and then start rubbing!  You want to rub the wet cotton forcefully across the water mark in the same direction as the wood grain.  This process may take some time, and quite a bit of pressure, but the ring will disappear if you are patient. 

The heat caused by the friction works with the chemicals in the Ring Remover to pull the moisture up out of the wood. Once you are done, there should be no evidence that the ring was ever there.  If you now see a shiny spot in that area, you can either choose to rub out the rest of the table to bring out the shine, or use a paste wax over the table which will even out the shine, and also provide a nice layer of protection for your wood. Just so you know, waxing your table requires lots of rubbing as well, so don't attempt both of these projects on the same day.

So there you have it folks, the simple, yet physical task of removing those pesky white rings from your table.  I have been trying to think of useful ideas to help you all avoid the rings in the first place, here is what I came up with...

1. Serve all of your beverages out of sipy cups this year.
2. Make everyone hold their beverage the entire time they are at your home.
3. Don't serve beverages, list on your invite that everyone needs to get hydrated before leaving home,
4. Give all your guests a straw so that they can drink out of your punchbowl and not have to hold glasses.
5. Ask your guests to put their glassware on the floor when they are not drinking it.  This works best if you do not have a hardwood floor, are not worried about carpet stains, or do not have pets.

Any other brilliant solutions to avoiding Moisture Rings on your wood surfaces during your holiday parties and feasts this year?

Headboard with a Shrinkage Problem

 This beautiful 19th century headboard went through some unfortunate wood shrinkage when it was brought from the moist eastern climate to the more dry western climate.  The center panel shrunk from side to side.  This caused it to fit it's frame vertically but not horizontally.  A prior attempt at a repair was done, whomever did it added a round strip of wooden trim into the seam between the panel and the frame, to try and hide the ill fitting wood.

This really was not a great fix, it hid the problem but did not actually repair it.  So the bed was brought to us for a more permanent restoration job.   What we are in the process of doing is quite a bit more complicated.   We started out by cutting and contouring a piece of wood to fit each side of the center panel.  Since the bed has veneer on both sides,  we had to plane down our new piece of wood so that it would be thin enough to handle two pieces of veneer and still be the correct thickness.  The next step was possibly the trickiest.  Veneer had to be cut to match the angles of the existing veneer on the headboard.   The patch was then glued to the center panel and we will next have to do color touchup so that the pieces  appear to be one.  Once all that is done, the frame can go back on and the work on the headboard will be completed.

Dog Chewed Table Leg

 This is not our first post about having to repair a piece of furniture that has been the victim of a teething puppy.  Unfortunately, wood is such a great surface for puppies to chew on.  The owner of this table did the right thing though in bringing the table legs to us.

We began by filling the damaged areas and contouring them to the correct shape.  The entire length of the corner we were able to fill with wood, and the smaller, more oddly shaped damage we filled with a wood colored epoxy putty.   You can see the result of those structural repairs in the above picture.  From there it left the hands of our Repair Craftsman and entered the Touchup Man's territory.   He did all the cosmetic repairs to the leg.  A few different methods were used, including burn-ins and hand paining in the woodgrain with pigment powder colors.  The damage to the table leg is now invisible.    The tricky thing about touchup repairs, is that if you know where the damage originally was, you can almost always look hard and find it again,  but if you don't know where the damage was,  you will never find it.

The leg is now ready to take it's place back in the dining room.  Hopefully the puppy has found some better things to chew on and will leave this piece of furniture alone.

Weaving Samples for Inspiration

We have a fun project we are working on for our office that I want to share with you.  Very soon, when you come into our office, you will see a beautiful display of cane samples hanging on our walls.   Most people only are familiar with one  cane pattern, generally known as '6 strand'.  We wanted to give our customers a better idea of the variety of weaves available, in case the inspiration would give them an idea about a different look for their chair.  We have 8 completed samples so far and saveral more beatiful designs on the way.  In these photos you can see a ‘4 Strand’ weave, ‘Victoria’, ‘Double Victoria’, ‘Star Of David’, ‘Daisies’, ‘Double Daisies’, and ‘Daisy and Buttons’.  These are just a few weaving examples, there are som any out there to choose from.  We can also weave colored strands into the design, and weave in beautiful center medallions.  I will post photos of those for you later. 

We would love for you to bring us your chair, and work with us to find a beautiful, different, decorative weave, that will set your chair apart from the rest.