Touching up painted wood?
 

Hey all, what do you do with the painted wood items that need touch up from time to time? I have a pair of featherweight tables and I've used Howard's Feed and Wax on the stained wood parts and that part looks great but the black trim around the sides is looking pretty beat. I feel sacrilegious touching it up with my micron permanent ink pens...

See if you can find some paint for it. Possibly at a craft store.

And paint all of it, or just try to blend it, do you think?

The black is most likely aniline dye mixed with shellac to make a black paint(ebonized as we say). If you want to be correct in the finish test the black with alcohol and see if it becomes tacky if it does then it is shellac, if not it is most likely varnish or lacquer. If it is shellac it can be blended if lacquer the whole will have to be painted. Lacqure does not blend well.

Well, in that case, it's a good thing I had some practice with french polishing. ;) I bet it is shellac but I will test it probably tonight. Lee Valley has an Ebony Black aniline water stain. That's the stuff?

No Tammi you want the aniline ebony that is alcohol soluble not water.

huh. Not shellac. I would almost think it's an opaque stain.

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ETA: Acetone dissolves paint and any clear it might have on top of it.

I wondered about that. I would have to look for it then but it's sounding like I'm not going to be going that route anyway?

How old is your table? I'm not sure what Singer used either on their cast iron machines or the wood furniture pieces; when and if they ever changed their recipe for the black Japanning. At some point they made beige, tan and green models that looked very much like their shiny black counter parts.

In furniture there are a few general guidelines to go by; up until 1920s, mostly shellac and different varnishes. There were a lot of waxes and all kinds of blends. The 20s is a transition period to cellulose lacquer, and by 1930 it's the most commonly used transparent finish. Acrylic lacquer very fast took over in the 1950s once it was introduced. It's at least a guide to what to check first, as it's always just guide line to what was most commonly used. They are all still in use to some degree. I have no idea what the black wood finish is, would be interesting to know if there's anything written by Singer's cabinet makers.

I'm not sure of either of their ages. One would be older than the other - it has wood legs and the other has metal legs. It would have to be somewhere in the mid-30s to late 60s though. That's when the machines were made. Did they still make them for the late models? I'm not sure - since they had shorter beds....

I'd rather not do a repaint - I'm assuming that involves stripping the paint that's here. Do I revert to my pen touch ups? Would a dye or stain stick to the things that are no longer painted/lacquered?

I'm going to need to take a closer look in the daylight. It almost looks like I can see dark and light wood grain through the black. Would that be a stain?


I found one article a long time ago about cabinet making at Singer's factories. It talked about the forests they located near but I don't remember anything else about the cabinet side (not that I've spent a lot of time looking). I can't even remember where that first article came from. *sigh* CRS flare up apparently.