The look of failure
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I am repairing a piano stool for a friend. One stretcher was broken and the upper disk into which the legs insert was broken in two (failed lamination). Several M&T’s were loose. I turned a new stretcher, pulled apart the week joints, glued it all back together, and dyed the stretcher to match the dark brown finish. The rest of the finish was a mess. It looked like someone had attempted to strip it, but then gave up. So, there were patches bare down to wood, a few places with scraped blank spots, but then many places with bubbled but hard finish where it seemed a stripper had been applied and then allowed to dry.
She doesn’t want the stool to look new and doesn’t want to do a full strip of the finish. We talked it over and decided I would scrape the loose stuff, feather the stripped vs. non-stripped, and then glaze over with dye followed by a top coat. The goal was to make it look more uniform and get rid of the crustiness.
I warned her that with the degraded old finish, it was a complete chemical mystery, so we could not predict what would happen and it could be bad. It ended up bad. It looked good after the first coat of top coat, but you can see what happened when the second coat was applied….the first coat balled up so that the whole thing looks like wet finish with sand in it. I waited 30 hours for the first coat to dry (normal drying time 12 to 24), so whether this is a fundamental adhesion problem of the first coat or if letting it cure even longer would have prevented it, I don’t know, but it is most likely adhesion.
For various reasons, I decided not to put down a barrier coat of shellac, which likely would have prevented this.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.By the way, the three photos are:
1. The repaired stool after scraping and feathering. The stretcher that is solid in color is the newly turned one.
2. The stool after applying dye to normalize the color. No finish yet, just dye. There is a slight sheen because I think the GF dye has just a little bit of binder in it.
3. A close up of the stool seat a few minutes after applying the second finish coat. It brushed on fine- flowed out nice and smooth – and then turned to this mess.
Yeah, at a minimum. It looked like they just walked away from it, at least in sections. So, not only not neutralized, but really a crust of of what whatever was left behind in those sections. On the base, I scraped all of that off. The seat seemed to have been completely stripped though, and maybe even sanded a bit.
Here’s a photo of the seat after cleaning up my mess. I let it sit for a few hours to let much of the coating evaporate off (it’s an oil based finish) and then just wiped it back with mineral spirits. Luckily, the new color is intact. I won’t know whether any of the first coat of finish is on there or not until I look at it tomorrow.
Since the color survived, I’m going to put on a barrier coat of shellac and carry on from there. I’m not sure about the base, which right now just have the first coat of finish on it. I think I’m going to let everything cure for an extended period, put on shellac, and carry on from there. It will be a weak finish, but that’s what we have if a full strip isn’t in the cards.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.9 May 2017 at 6:33 pm #311893Just out of interest, what kind of coating did you apply on the first attempt?
And this is a beautiful stool that deserves a good finish. So, in your place, I would insist on doing a proper job (unless you charge her by the hour).
Dieter
This is General Finishes Arm-R-Seal over their water based dye. Arm-R-Seal is one of the most durable finishes I’ve ever used. It’s an oil based finish.
I must do what she wishes. It’s her choice. She’s a friend, not a customer, and she understands the risks involved. For her, the beauty is in displaying a history rather than being perfect.
Problems overcome. Hope she likes it. There are imperfections in the seat that could only have been removed by going hard with a scraper, sanding, etc., which would have been inconsistent with her wishes, so I left them in.
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