UKC

I've 8 softwood panel doors to strip of thick gloss and old varnish (Shellac?) probably dating back to the 30s. Doing it manually is grim, slow and damages the molding plus the varnish residue melts clogging the sandpaper if a power sander is used.

Anyone have experience of getting them dipped, are they likely to curl up like a prawn cracker or fall apart?

They're generally very well made with no filler, no idea what the original glue was but the repairs I've done have been with basic PVA.

jk

In reply to jkarran:
We had ours dipped after I did 2 manually. Results were very good, we'd heard about warping and falling apart, which seems to a risk, but we were lucky.

I reasoned if it did go wrong, I could buy replicas for not much... still far better than doing another 6 manually.

In reply to jkarran:

I had the same number of doors done severals ago. Well worth the money. Not had any issues with them since they were repainted. Any filler residue was not affected by the process not sure about glue but the joints are still holding firm!

In reply to both:

Did they come up squeaky clean with no paint/residue left? I'm hoping to just wax or clearcoat them after a rub down.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

I've used Nitromoors before with good but stinky nasty chemically results.
If I had to do anything similar again I'd get them dipped.

In reply to jkarran:

I have an old house (1903) we stripped the original pine panel doors,but first removed the strips of mitered wood put in the panel recess, as this seemed to be where the most paint collected, and would likely not all be removed.

Might be worth checking on one door if dipping in case the grain of the wood is prone to lift, in which case you can be left with 'hairy' or 'furry' doors.

In reply to jkarran:

My parents had all the doors in their house dipped a couple of years back. The doors are pine panel doors, and like yours had coats of thick gloss and shellac dating back to the 30s. The results were excellent, especially when compared to the panelling on the staircase which they had to strip by hand (and that was a horrendous job!).

In reply to jkarran:

Dipping is great - and pretty cheap. In the unlikely event that they fall apart you can either re-glue or just buy a stripped one from a reclaim place (we got some at about £30 a go)

Cheers all, sounds like you've have had good results. I think I'll give it a go.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

I've had several dipped & stripped by a 3rd party and also done some at home using an electric paint-stripper and then sanded by hand (well, my wife did it!) Hers were much better than the outsourced attempts.

The 3rd party wasn't too bad, no twisting etc, but some of the joints did open slightly. As long as the acid isn't too strong when they're dipped, you should be ok, provided the doors are of a decent thickness. I'd recommend doing a thorough job of sanding them yourself afterwards though.

In reply to Fraser:

By electric paint stripper do you mean a hot air gun or a steamer or something else?

The hot air gun works but you still end up with a thin film of shellac in the grain that can't be scraped and is a pig to sand.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Hot air gun. Maybe we were lucky, or just didn't have that coating....I can't remember now I'm afraid, it was about 25 years ago.

In reply to jkarran:

We had all our internal doors done recently (6 of them) and they've come back brilliant. A couple of them have expanded a little but nothing a few clamps and some glue can't sort. I've had to shave a little off some of them to get them to fit again in the original jambs but worth the money. We paid £30/door which I thought was rather expensive but it would cost a lot more for new ones!

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Years ago I had half a dozen pine doors stripped and they certainly looked a lot better but to be honest they never really fitted the frames again properly. Almost all of them warped (particularly along the leading edge) and in hindsight the money would have been better spent on (new)replacement doors.

In reply to jkarran:
One note of caution, are you sure all the doors are made of the same timber. My parents were planning to just wax or clear varnish their doors but when they came back from being dipped they found that some of the doors didn't match because of the timber type used. In the end they painted them again although they did look a lot better with just a couple of coats of paint rather than the dozen or so that were there originally.

In reply to Doug Kerr:

Unfortunately, at least 50% of the doors in our house are custom made to fit so getting replacements would have cost £££.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Not certain they're all the same or that there isn't some horror lurking under the paint on one or two of them but the few I've worked on so far are good and made from the same timber.

Doug: They couldn't fit any worse than they do now! At least stripped I see what I'm working with to fix them up.

jk

In reply to Ffion Blethyn:

It's worth noting that Nitromors had to change their chemical mixture due to EU regulation and it's now useless for varnish (regardless of what is says on the bottle).

In reply to Matt_b:

It's useless full stop these days.

In reply to Matt_b:

Natch! Pesky EU and their environmental concerns!

Whatever next?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28878432

In reply to Ffion Blethyn:


I can sort of see the point in that it'll drive the manufacturers to push up efficiency which will be easy enough but at added customer cost*. Still, that only really impacts the top of the range stuff, the rest of the range will just have less power, to do the same work people will just use them for longer!

*who knows, being forced to look for efficiency in a competitive market might actually drive some innovation

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Encouraging innovation and efficiency can only be a good thing in the long run.

"No models made by Dyson are affected, as all the motors on their machines are below 1600w."

There is a bit of a timescale involved though, quite motivating!

"From 1 September 2017, all vacuum cleaners will have to be less than 900w."

How long does it take to research design build and bring a new more efficient technology to market?

In reply to Matt_b:


totally, new nitromors is just rubbish as is the polycell stuff that claims to remove up to 12 layers of paint (only if you apply it 12 times removing each layer of bubbled paint as you go).

In reply to jkarran:


My ill fitting doors were even mentioned in the survey, although personally I'm not bothered, if it's an old house you expect that sort thing.

Results from stripping vary according to the quality (weight) of the doors and the quality of the stripping, especially how they are dried after dipping. Dippers will absolve themselves of any responsibility for warping because it's just too unpredictable.

Seal them before you hang them (and after you've tried to straighten or glue them) so you can do the bottom.