Re: Those flaking door cappings again
Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 7:28 pm
Well I started this thread and I have now finished my door cappings so I thought I would tell you how it went. I got finished results I am happy with. What I will say will have experts throwing up their hands in horror, but here goes.
Having tried chemical paste strippers, and a hot air gun (the latter has its uses) I eventually found that the best tool was a stanley knife. I used it firstly to lift off all the peeling stuff. Then I used the blade horizontally, i.e. resting the blade flat against the wood and flicking it sideways- using the weight of the tool - to chip the rest of the coating off. I found this worked quite well; it didn't seem to hurt the veneer and left the best bare surface. If it didn't seem to shift a particular bit, I'd turn the wood the other way round - that often made the difference.
It was very slow, each door capping took half a day (so good job I'm recently retired) and you have to watch it because bits of the stuff can fly up in your eyes.
The worst bits are the two ends, the pointed bit and the opposite end. The more flakey it is when you start, the easier it is but the two broad ends will always be the worst and the pointed end will probably be the worst of the two and will not have flaked at all. The tops are always easiest to clean off; they've had all the sun and peeled the most.
Once the stuff was off, I set to with sandpaper. Yes sandpaper; the stuff you're never meant to use. I found they would take quite a bit of this without ever going through the veneer. Then wet and dry paper to finish.
Then I applied Colron antique pine wood stain (it's a light oak colour). Optional: I have wondered whether they needed it.
After that I applied 5 coats of yacht varnish, rubbing down each coat with wet and dry. There are doubtlessly loads of other products you can use but I used yacht varnish because I read somwehere that it doesn't peel or crack. (I got a nice glassy finish). This is a job you don't want to be doing again!
And here's an interesting bit:
One of the cappings I used was from a set I bought from the club stand at Stoneleigh a few years ago. I thought they were of precious little value because they were so far gone. On one of them the veneer was half missing along the top. Then I saw a programme on TV called car SOS where the professionals took a plane to some Herald ones. So I took a plane along the top of mine. And would you believe it, you couldn't see an edge between the planed and still veneered sections, and the newly planed wood - being a hardwood - looked identical to the veneered - or even better. So I gave it the woodstain and varnish treatment and that was the one I ended up applying to the car. You couldn't tell that the top veneer had gone.
I'm definitely not claiming this is the right way, best way or only way to do the job, just that after taking 10 years dodging it and getting round to it, this way worked for me and the cappings look just like I wanted them to ; i.e. how they looked when our cars were new.
Having tried chemical paste strippers, and a hot air gun (the latter has its uses) I eventually found that the best tool was a stanley knife. I used it firstly to lift off all the peeling stuff. Then I used the blade horizontally, i.e. resting the blade flat against the wood and flicking it sideways- using the weight of the tool - to chip the rest of the coating off. I found this worked quite well; it didn't seem to hurt the veneer and left the best bare surface. If it didn't seem to shift a particular bit, I'd turn the wood the other way round - that often made the difference.
It was very slow, each door capping took half a day (so good job I'm recently retired) and you have to watch it because bits of the stuff can fly up in your eyes.
The worst bits are the two ends, the pointed bit and the opposite end. The more flakey it is when you start, the easier it is but the two broad ends will always be the worst and the pointed end will probably be the worst of the two and will not have flaked at all. The tops are always easiest to clean off; they've had all the sun and peeled the most.
Once the stuff was off, I set to with sandpaper. Yes sandpaper; the stuff you're never meant to use. I found they would take quite a bit of this without ever going through the veneer. Then wet and dry paper to finish.
Then I applied Colron antique pine wood stain (it's a light oak colour). Optional: I have wondered whether they needed it.
After that I applied 5 coats of yacht varnish, rubbing down each coat with wet and dry. There are doubtlessly loads of other products you can use but I used yacht varnish because I read somwehere that it doesn't peel or crack. (I got a nice glassy finish). This is a job you don't want to be doing again!
And here's an interesting bit:
One of the cappings I used was from a set I bought from the club stand at Stoneleigh a few years ago. I thought they were of precious little value because they were so far gone. On one of them the veneer was half missing along the top. Then I saw a programme on TV called car SOS where the professionals took a plane to some Herald ones. So I took a plane along the top of mine. And would you believe it, you couldn't see an edge between the planed and still veneered sections, and the newly planed wood - being a hardwood - looked identical to the veneered - or even better. So I gave it the woodstain and varnish treatment and that was the one I ended up applying to the car. You couldn't tell that the top veneer had gone.
I'm definitely not claiming this is the right way, best way or only way to do the job, just that after taking 10 years dodging it and getting round to it, this way worked for me and the cappings look just like I wanted them to ; i.e. how they looked when our cars were new.
