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.

Fancy Marquetry Table gets a Touchup

 This home made marquetry table came to us because the veneer  on the top was damaged and peeling. We stripped the table and then went to work re-gluing the raised areas and cutting new pieces where the veneer had to be replaced all together.

All the veneer repairs have been completed, but there were still flaws in the marquetry all over the place and these had to be corrected with touchup.  Some of the flaws were simply because the wood was not the same age, and so hadn't darkened with time,  and some of them were from the original veneer that had tiny little breaks and nicks.
Our color wizard chose 3 different pigment powders from his collection to create this mustardy yellow.  He used White, Green, Canary Yellow and Pine.  This is the mixture for just one of the colors he had to use, each different wood type he touched up on this piece needed it's own special custom blend.

This table top uses many different kinds of woods including Birds Eye Maple, Rosewood, Lacewood, Elm and Ebony.  The colors he chose, along with his expert fine gran strokes, blended perfectly with each wood he was working on.  The table top looks beautiful and is ready for it's final step,  a coat of orange Shellac over the entire table.  

Fabricating a Carved Settee Leg

 From time to time we have something come to us that not only has a broken leg, but the broken off part is completely gone!  Now usually we like to put any broken off parts back onto the piece, as then the wood is all the same age, and it will continue to age at the same pace as the rest of the item of furniture.  But, in a situation like this, where the broken off piece is completely gone,  we have to start from scratch and do our best to choose wood that will blend with the rest of the piece.

 In this case,  we had a beautiful Settee come in with one of  the more decorative front legs broken off.  The Settee is made out of mahogany so we put together some small pieces of matching mahogany and attached
them to the leg, as you can see in the first picture.   You can see in the second picture that we have taken some of the excess wood off and have drilled holes along the inside curve of the leg to make hand carving a bit easier.  Next a template of the leg shape was attached to the leg, for more refined removal of excess wood.  You can see in the 4th picture that all the excess wood has been removed and the fine shaping is ready to begin.
 The leg carving turned out very well.  It looks almost exactly like the other two on the settee.   Now it is off  to the finishing department.  It is their job to make the epoxy line disappear and of course to stain and finish the entire settee.  It is not particularly often that we have to do this kind of work, but fortunately we have the guys with the skill to pull it off.   Do you have a job you think is impossible?   Bring it to us, clearly this job was not enough of a challenge, so your impossible repair might be just the challenge they need!

Another 'Modern Furniture' Cautionary Tale...

Most of the furniture we work with here at the shop are antiques or good quality newer furniture,  but from time to time we get a piece in which makes us sad for our client, and mad at the maker.  You see, so often when modern furniture is made, there are shortcuts taken in the building process which the buyer is oblivious to.  We have had coffee tables come in that are completely made out of cardboard!  We often have pieces arrive that are pressboard or 'particle board' covered in veneer, it is like a wolf in sheep's clothing.  

This time we had a bed frame come to us for stripping.  It was a sturdy looking bed frame with a dark finish.    We put it through the stripping chemicals with no problems and all the finish came off just as it should have.  But then, when it was put in our 'neutralizing bath', we discovered something very sad.  The curved 'sleigh' top of the footboard began to bubble up and stretch as you can see in the top photo.  It was only then that we discovered, that the curved section had been made out of particle board and then covered in paper that was printed with a wood grain on it.  The glue holding the paper on failed and the paper could easily be pulled away from the particle board.   

This means that in the building process, the makers decided to have a curved particle board section pressed into the shape they wanted, instead of having actual wood carved into that same shape.  They chose to do an inexpensive short cut.  Unfortunately it is not inexpensive to fix the mess that has now been made because of that short cut.  The hard thing here, is that so often, there is no way to easily determine whether short cuts were made, before buying a piece of modern furniture. 

The best way to ensure that the piece of furniture you are purchasing is going to me made out of wood, not wood dust, paper or cardboard, is to buy older furniture.  The older it in the safer you are, but just as a point of reference,   Particle Board was introduced in the 1950s,  became widespread in the 1960s, and since the 1970s it's use has been refined, but is still commonly found in furniture of all levels of 'quality'.   If you are planning on purchasing modern made furniture, make sure you do your research.  If you went out to purchase a car, or a home, I am sure you would ask all kinds of questions to make sure that you were getting the best item for your money.  Do the same thing when you go out to purchase your bed frame, dinning table, hutch, etc and you will at least have smaller odds of getting a piece of junk.  

Teething Dog Vs. Antique Rocker

This platform rocking chair just came in to our shop, after having been the object of a teething dog's attention.  This is just one section of the damaged area.  There are scrapes and gouges all over the base of  this lovely old rocker which would usually cause the owner of a piece damaged like this, to throw up their hands in tearful frustration and then put the chair in some corner or Attic out of the way.

Fortunately the savvy owner of  this rocker brought it to us.  We have done work like this before and will be able to fix it up beautifully.  As you can see, this buffet leg had  similar damage, when it was attacked  by a hungry household pet.  We had more than one option as far as how to fix it, but the owner of the piece chose to have us make a new leg.  You would never know it had been so badly damaged would you?