I have this chemical product from the 1970s (I assume something similar is availble today) that is a cloth infused with some type of oily chemical.
I really gets white rings out of furniture, even really bad ones if you rub long enough.
Any idea what this chemical is and how it works?
It has a very mild abrasive in it. A very similar product that is still available is Nevrdull.
But the finish of the furniture still looks polished, not as though any layers have been taken off–you sure?
Or are you actually taking a few layers off of polish that have been clouded by heat?
As I understand, the oil is actually soaking into the wood grain and filling in the tiny pits in the marred finish, making it look darker.
You got it. These products are pretty amazing, actually. You can polish watch crystals and even rehablitate scratched sunglasses with them. The abrasive in them is very fine.
We use Nevrdull to clean metals in the museum in which I work. It takes forever to clean off tarnish with it, but you can trust it not to leave scratches. (Always wear gloves when using it, or you’ll be sorry!)
We never use it on wood, though and I’d highly recommend that no one ever use it on any antiques, or surfaces with laquered finishes.
Anything that is for polishing will have some abrasive in it. It polishes because it is abrasive. IME Nevrdull does a good job of polishing out scratches and white rings in finished wood. I use it for polishing the knives in my collection and it very quickly removes tarnish and or rust. Never noted that it is at all hard on my fingers, either.
Sorry - what are white rings?
[quote=Scumpup]
Of course-- rubbing anything against anything causes some abrasion. If used gently, it does not leave damaging scratches on a metal’s surface the way gritty polishes do, which is why we use it. Since even rubbing cotton against metal will leave scratches if used roughly, we’re ultra gentle with it-- It once took me four months to clean a set of brass lamps using it.
Now, you probably shouldn’t use it to clean antique coins, because I’ve heard that coin dealers are very anal about even microscopic abrasions.
I know you probably don’t use your collection for food service, but if anyone else needs to know, you shouldn’t use this product on anything that touches food without cleaning it very thouroughly.
I should have been clearer. (I thought of this right after I hit submit.) It doesn’t burn your hands or anything like that, but it gets them very dirty and it can be hard to get them clean again.
The oil reacting with the tarnish makes a thin black mud, which will make your hands FILTHY. If it gets under your nails, you might have a hell of a time getting it out. I once made this mistake, and though I rubbed my nails raw with a toothbrush trying to get the gunk out from under them, I had to go around with black rings under my nails for a couple of days.
If you put a glass of cold water on a wood table, the glass may “sweat” or gather condensation, which drips down the sides and leaves a round puddle on the table. If you don’t wipe it up immediately, the wood may soak up the water and turn whitish where it sat.
Aha. So that explains why my mother is such a coaster nazi (and why I don’t know what white rings are).
I guess I should specify that when I’ve used Nevrdull to remove rings from furniture the preferred technique is to use it lightly and feather out the ring, then follow up immediately with a coat of furniture wax. I’ve used the same technique on gunstocks that were lightly marred and had good success there too.
WRT to Lissa’s informed opinion, that is no doubt how things are done in a museum. My home is not a museum and my furniture is not a collection of valuable heirlooms. Dousing the lot of it in kersosene and setting it ablaze would not notably decrease its value.
And if you don’t have the mentioned products on hand, and you aren’t worried about antiques, good old fashioned toothpaste works, too!
A slight clarification… The wood does not soak up the water, the finish does. Whether you get white water/heat rings or not depends on the finish on your table. Shellac and laquer finish are most likely to have this happen. Laquer is the most common factory applied finish. And, as scumup stated, you are actually removing the tiny surface layer of finish that the water is trapped.