The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This is the problem with using Pledge on furniture. What I bought this Edison a few months ago I saw the can on the guys counter in the kitchen and asked him if he sprayed it on that Edison. Well, I should have included his wife in that question as I'll assume he wasn't lying when he said he didn't. She is probably the guilty one then.

This is how the seal coat of shellac reacted yesterday. And lacquer will often times act worse and then take days to dry.

When I washed the finish off this thing, I used paint remover and then finished washing all the residue (or so I thought) off with lacquer thinner. And yet the silicone in the Pledge insists on doing its dirty work. This is SO frustrating and hopefully, I'll be able to get it buried with 'dry' coats of lacquer. If not, I'll find another cabinet and refinish that one and this one can go to the burn pile. At least the top of the lid isn't doing this, but both sides and the door front are all doing this. I've dealt with this on pianos I've refinished too, and it never works out well. Fisheye eliminator is a whole other can of worms and I'm not going to contaminate my spray equipment with that stuff anyway.

So, if you are using Pledge, just remember that this is why refinishers dread that stuff. And if if it seems like that stuff will make an otherwise horrible finish look better until you can find someone to refinish it. All I can say there is HA! good luck with that.

A friend of mine used to work at Widdecomb furniture in Grand Rapids. He told me about a disgruntled employee who sprayed a whole can of silicone all over the finishing room. What a mess!
Dave D

WOW would that be a mess! Turtle Wax briefly used silicone in their wax in the late 60's and the antique car people nearly had a stroke when they found out that it nearly made re-painting their old cars impossible. That formula quickly went into the dust bin. I would email the folks that make the polish and ask them what they would recommend, but I doubt I'd get an answer from them. Pledge does seem to do ok on worn out dime store records though.....

Another thing I learned about silicone, specifically silicone spray lubricant. I had used it on the long ("piano") hinges on my storm doors. When I tried to paint these raw aluminum doors with white spray epoxy enamel, guess what? Wherever the silicone had settled, the paint didn't bond with those surfaces! Nuts! None of my attempts to remove this residue was completely effective. Only by applying several coats of the epoxy paint, with complete drying between coats, was I able to get a halfway decent looking painted surface, although it was still blotchy and uneven.; fortunately, these areas are not prominently visible.

Moral of story: never, but never, use silicone-anything on a surface that you will ever want to paint! This stuff, like herpes and tattoos, is forever!

Amen to that!

A former Chrysler employee told me a story some years ago. Chrysler was having a huge problem with fisheyes, due to silicone contamination. Loads of cars with ruined paint. They completely decontaminated the whole paint dept., but still had issues. When a car company gets loads of bad paint on cars, they don't repaint them... they scrap them, (or so I'm told). Long story short, a member of the nighttime cleaning crew was spraying Pledge on the fake plastic plants in the company lobby because it made them look nice. The building's air handling equipment sucked up the overspray and sent it through the whole plant!

What I don't understand is how "100% Silicone Caulk" can also be "paintable"!? What gives with that?

I would guess the silicone caulk has something in it so the surface flattens when it dries so the paint has something to grab hold of. I won't use spray silicone lubricant either just because of all the trouble with any sort of overspray. It's just not worth it.

I refinished an oak piano for a gal 8-10 years ago that they stripped and then used Pledge on it for 10 years every time they dusted. WOW was that a mess. I finally just filled the grain and stained it and gave it two coats of paste wax. Any kind of finish other than that acted like it was being blown off with compressed air! And then it refused to dry of course. At least it was oak and it's almost impossible to make oak look totally stupid with a bad finishing job. It's hard to believe that product is still being sold.

Speaking of silicone caulk, I've used it to seal the corners on horns (especially Orthophonics).

I must apologize for using stark white silicone on the horn of my Victrola Colony, because it is clearly visible and ugly (there are pictures in that thread and videos on Youtube ). I guess I didn't realize how noticeable the non-clear one would be. Either that or when I put the horn back in the machine, I forgot that the early ones didn't come with a grille.

Needless to say, one of these days, I will be scraping all that out and I will seal with something clear.

-Connor

Thanks Earl for the warning about Pledge. I won't dust my phonos with it any more. Marc.

marcapra wrote:Thanks Earl for the warning about Pledge. I won't dust my phonos with it any more. Marc.

Guardsman is a great alternative spray polish and contains no silicone. I buy it at Ace hardware but I've seen it on the shelves of many other stores.