What is the process of stripping furniture?

Learn about the process for stripping furniture of it's original finish and producing a virgin wood piece.

We call it the vat method because it's a large vat full of a hundred gallons of stripper. It's the same stripper that you would buy at the hardware store; it is very volatile. We put the piece of furniture in the stripper and let it soak for a few minutes so the chemical can do the work. Then we use long handled brushes and start scrubbing the finish off while it's under the stripper so the stripper can do the work. You cannot just scrape finish off. Then we take it out and rinse all the chemicals off so that it comes back to you clean. All pieces do not come back as virgin wood, especially if they have been painted, because certain paints tend to go down into the wood. Even if you get all the paint off, the color of the pigment that put in there will leach in to the wood and that never comes out. Anytime you touch wood you've got to sand it; the more you sand it, the prettier the finish. You go and spend a couple of hours sanding it and getting it smooth, get all the wood fibers that are sticking up off and finish it and it's a beautiful finish.

Written by Frank Hunt -
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