Stubborn Varnish

[dddd]

Not sure if this is exactly the right area for this question but here goes anyway.
Wonder if anyone can help me out, I have a few planes now that I'm trying to tune/fettle/do up and generally try to make them look nice. They all have nice rosewood handles but are covered in some god awful cracked and messy varnish, I'd like to get rid of this though without doing too much damage so I can make them all beautiful and nice. Has anyone got any hints or tips for me.

Cheers

N.

 

[ike]

Anything wrong with ordinary paint stripper-sanding sealer(shellac)-wirewool-wax methodology?


cheers

Ike

...now Waiting to be shot to pieces :roll:

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Try rubbing the handles with methylated spirits. The "varnish" is likely shellac. This should smooth it all over.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Alf]

If that doesn't work, sometimes it'll pop off okay with the aid of a scraper. Then you have to take it back to bare wood and refinish. Much beter if you can revitalise the existing finish with the meths. [-o< :wink:

Cheers, Alf

 

[dddd]

Cheers for the help guys, purchased some paint stripper and some shellac and with a little bit of messing around and some furious sanding the handles are now coming up an absolute treat! Thanks again, much appreciated.
Now I have to get those bases flat, can't wait for that, hmmmmm.

 

[Shady]

Sorry - bit late, but I had exactly this problem a while ago: the easiest answer, both in terms of speed and effort and lack of damage to the wood, is toluene, acetone or xylene thinners. Buy from a car supply place. It rips straight through shellac, without damaging the wood. Also tears any oil off - second use is for prepping oily woods for glue up. Just wear some rubber gloves and don't sit and sniff it too much!!

 

[Noel]

Just a word of warning with the xylene - used as a solvent (meta xylene), best used outdoors and if you can smell it, you're inhaling it. Confusion, headaches, liver/kidney damage etc can result. Best not to go near the stuff. Doesn't do much good for the atmosphere either.

Noel

 

[Shady]

Without getting into it in any way Noel, that's about the set of potential personal damage carcinogenic wood dust'll cause ya, or long term exposure to wood dust without appropriate lung protection - and the environmental damage our hobby has done/ will do in terms of species loss and cost comfortably exceeds the environmental loading of modern chemical production for mass use solvents like xylene, however careful we now try to be.

Any consumption of any resource involves a sensible appreciation of what we're doing.

I'm not advocating swimming in it, or dumping a tanker load in your local brook, but it is a widely used solvent that will clean up your raw material in double quick time. It's roughly on a par with petrol in terms of environmental and personal risks.

That said, I'd fully agree in principle - use the least dangerous stuff that does the job for you!

 

[Noel]

Shady, I'm with you on all you said. We damage ourselves enough on a daily basis. I'd just rate uncut meta xylene as a lot worse than petrol, but point taken.

Noel

 

[Shady]

NP - It never does any harm to emphasise the health issues - I didn't mean to appear cavalier in the first post.