Paint stripper is made up of a collection of chemicals. One of them, no longer used in EU Member States is carcinogenic. There are two main types of paint stripper varieties:
Lasers are sensational. If Goran feels the need to put on his favourite music CD, stereo sound is played back with clarity. Give or take the odd skip, perhaps. They are used for engraving and barcode scanning. They are good for decorative uses a la Jean Michel-Jarre at London Docklands some thirty years ago. Of late, we have learned about laser paint stripping. Instead of chemicals, a laser beam could be used to strip the Cover Plus Cornflower Blue off a charming fireplace.
With the nights getting lighter, the spring cleaning season isn’t too far away. For many, spring cleaning involves heavy sessions with the vacuum cleaner and dusting display cabinets. It is also a good time to give your wooden furniture a spring clean. Perhaps a touch of wood finishing and stripping may suffice. This has inspired our trio of wood finishing and stripping films.
Wood finishing enables us to restore our wooden furniture to an ‘as new’ condition. It adds shine to our pianos and sheen to our sideboards. Its character is restored, even more so if daubed with gloss paint in previous years. That is what we like about wood stripping and finishing: it brings our furniture back to life. Exactly as the designer and carpenter intended.
In our first clip from the eHow At Home YouTube channel, we see our craftsperson stain stripping half a table. This clip is clearly aimed at beginners and described in plain English.
Our second clip is a eulogy to the joys of mahogany. It also stresses how flexible it is for staining and easy to work with. The narrator gives us an insight into three staining techniques.
If you have an oyster yawl in Whitstable or a sailing vessel on The Solent, this third clip might be useful to you. In 21 minutes, we see how wood finishing techniques, tips, and materials were used by boat builders.
Premium Doors and Furniture, 01 February 2017.
During the Second World War, A.V. Roe’s iconic Lancaster Bomber played an important role in stopping the onward march of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. In aviation history, it is best known for its part in the Dambusters attack on the Ruhr dams. For three brothers in Lincolnshire, it has an emotional connection. It was the last resting place of brother Christopher Panton, who was shot down in a bombing raid in Nuremberg, in March 1944.
Continue reading “A £3.5m Lancaster Bomber Restoration Job”
If you’re a traditionalist, you would probably say the 1950s and 1960s have a lot to answer for in terms of design woes. The thought of Fablon or Formica or – perish the thought – covering your traditional fireplace is enough to give you nightmares. Today, traditional fireplaces are given more love these days. The cast iron fireplace can be brought to life as a decorative feature, or as a fully functioning fire.
Sixty years ago, most with-it households eschewed the beauty of traditional looking wood furniture. Wooden panels were something you hid from public view with a flat sheet of board. Though this made for a modern look, any character your door might have had was sapped to a nth of its life. Then, twenty or so years later, we rediscovered our love of all things traditional. With paint stripping, this meant substituting gaudy colours for exposed wood and varnishing.
In a previous post, we looked at why US households use paint stripper with a chemical that is banned in EU Member States. The chemical is DCM: Dichloromethane to give its full name. At the start of December 2016, the EPA has proposed a ban on TCE, otherwise known as Trichloroethylene for some applications.
There are two main types of chemical wood stripping treatments that are commonly used by door and furniture stripping companies like ours. These are solvent paint remover and caustic paint removers.
With Christmas looming, the last thing our fellows would like to think of for a week or two is door stripping. On the other hand, it is fair to say that our industry could do with some Christmas cheer. So on behalf of Santa Goran and his team, we would like to share this adaptation of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Complete with lyrics that best suit our industry.
You may wonder why you see signs of long-forgotten products adorning our buildings. Plainly and simply, they have been allowed to fade over the passage of time once the product was discontinued. Some may call this neglect but in many cases they add to the character of the building. With great affection we call them ghost signs as they are of historical interest. Continue reading “Ghost Signs Revealed by Paint Strippers”
