Rare Victorian Forum

My question is very similar to an earlier shellac question, but the particulars of my situation are different...

A few years ago my wife & I refinished the outside of our front doors.  This went well, but we had placed the doors on top of saw horses with old towels in between as cushions.  This project took a number of weeks during the summer (fairly humid) and people smarter than me would have been able to predict that the towels would have fused the the back-side of the doors.  We have some lovely lighter-color stripes on the back-side of the doors where the towels peeled away some of the finish (the varnish, I believe). 

Is there a recommended practice for "cleaning" the back-side of my doors to blend out these stripes?...something short of a full-blown refinishing (as in, no heat gun, sand paper, or chemical stripper)?  I should emphasize that we aren't looking to get the back-side of the doors to some like-new or furniture-worthy finish...old, patinated, alligatored stuff is great.  I'm thinking that there is a way to scrub off (or blend in) the surface layer of varnish using a rag (or steel wool) and some sort of liquid ().  ...then maybe brush on a coat of () for protection after a good washing?

Similarly, we have splatters of primer on the door casing and baseboards.  I think that the wood has the same sort of varnished finish on them (lightly alligatored).  Again, is there a recommendation from the group here on how to best approach getting the majority of these splatters off of the wood?

Thank you,

Jason

We put polyurethane (the same Minwax "spar" varnish you mention) on the front-side of the doors after going through a lengthy "soy gel" & sanding process.  The front looks great some 4 years later (a 4-year-old picture is attached)...no need to sand it anywhere.  It is that back-side that has the shellac (if not varnish) that bonded with the towels and left the odd racing stripes.  

Thank you for the advice...I'll give the denatured alcohol a try.  My hope is that I can give the surfaces a light scrubbing, blend out the stripes, and finish with a coat of either poly or shellac as per your advice.

We just recently started working twoards finishing this little entry vestibule.  The ceiling had collapsed a bit what with a leaky roof, so we got that re-plastered (plaster board with top-cost of plaster, or whatever the modern practice is) nearly 2 years ago.  I re-finished the floors earlier this spring.  I went about priming that new plaster over the weekend...splattered some here & there, but the baseboards and door casing already needed a harsh "cleaning" anyway.  I think that I am going to go one further and put sizing on the walls before attempting to paper with both acid-free liner paper and some hand-printed stuff from Wolff House & Bradbury.  I'm guessing I should scrub the woodwork between the sizing and the papering.  Good fun.

Thank you!

- Jason

jason have you found a solution to the strip problem? This is an old finish on the backs of the doors?

 Have you ever cleaned the finish on the backside? I am curious why there would be a reaction on the back side. If you are still having issues there are a few solutions I can suggest. I own a custom furniture shop/ restoration studio where we deal with a lot of early finishes and architectural items.

I prefer green Scotch brite (like a nylon synthetic steel wool. It's color coded for it's degree of coarse/ fineness) for stripping - it doesn't beak down and leave fragments like steel wool. If you use a water based finish and don't 100% remove all steel wool fragments they will form rust spots reacting to the water in the finish. woodwright