Oak XVI Refinish.

[EarlH]

Here are the front doors to an English Weathered Oak XVI Polished (Or whatever Victor called that finish) and it is definitely polished that I'm working on. I got them cleaned up and polished today and this is where I'm at with it. It's always kind of a slow process as the varnish has to dry hard enough to rub. Anyway, you can let me know what you think, you are not going to hurt my feelings either way. I'll post some more pictures of it later but just don't have time to take them right now as the machine is all apart and I need to move some stuff around to get to the rest of it. I have to admit in the photos I'm not all that wild about the color, but it does look better in a room with normal light.

[Jerry B.]

It looks very nice to me. At first glance I see the reflection of the towel and the rest looked like water marks in the finish. I looked again as saw the reflection of some rags and your knee and possibly a sock on the right door. Pick up those dirty socks!

It will look very nice. Good job. Jerry Blais

[EarlH]

Those are the rags I used to rub it out with. Ha! Socks are usually too rough to do polishing as they have polyester in them. Anything synthetic will usually leave all kinds of fine scratches all over the surface. I am doing the horn doors yet today and start on the sides of the case. I'll sleep good tonight as it is a lot of work to polish a finish.

[Silvertone]

Victor had two dark finishes that were the same color. The Weathered Oak was flat, and the the Early English Oak was polished. Often you need to look under the lid to see which of these finishes you are looking at, because the polished finish ages when exposed to sunlight to look dull and flat.

[EarlH]

Here's a picture I took before I decided to go over the whole case. I wet sanded the first door to get most of the really bad crazing off and get the worst of the old oxidized finish off and then went over it with a coat of Liberon finishing oil and sanded that into the old finish with 800 grit sandpaper and let it dry. One nice thing about these thick varnished finishes is that they do give you some old material to work with and you can do a fair amount of sanding with fine sandpaper before you'll go through the finish. The lid is the worst of course as it was used as a plant stand, so that will take awhile before it's done. Anyway, after I saw that the first door turned out pretty nicely, then I went ahead to do the whole cabinet the same way. If it wouldn't have turned out decently I would have stripped it and started over. I might still wish I had before the lid is done, but it will be ok and I can always set a plant or something on top of it.... Ha! Or just leave the lid up.
It's VERY dark under the lid and was a very high gloss originally. I'm not going to rub it out that shiny as I just don't care for that kind of a finish. Besides, it will show every dent and mark in the cabinet if I go that route. If you look at the door with the new finish on it, you can see all the dust motes in it. Those all have to be rubbed out for it to look right. It needs to be rubbed anyway as a polished finish really always does look better than a dripping wet glossy finish.

[Jerry B.]

What a dramatic difference. Jerry