jovially.top · workshop ledger
24 entries on the bench: what arrived, how the old finish came off, every abrasive in order, the coats that went back on, and what the materials actually cost. Drag the brass line on any pair to see the difference.
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After
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After
A five-drawer walnut dresser that had spent nine years under a leaking window. The top was ringed white, the veneer had lifted along the front edge of the carcass, and two drawer runners had swollen shut. Nine hours of the seventeen went on the veneer alone.
24 August 2026 17 h CNY 340-420
Before
After
A farmhouse ladder-back that had been reglued three times with white PVA, each time without taking the joints apart first. The rush was brittle enough to snap between two fingers. Six hours went on the frame, three on the seat.
26 August 2026 9 h CNY 150-210
Before
After
A Danish-style teak sideboard whose top had gone from warm brown to pale straw across the front two-thirds, because that is the part the window touched. The end panel had a 180 mm split, and the whole surface had been wiped with a silicone furniture polish for decades.
28 August 2026 11 h CNY 260-340
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After
A 1.9 m pine kitchen table wearing six decades of paint on the base and a century of scrubbing on the top. The top was salvageable by washing rather than stripping; the base was not, and the breadboard end had shrunk away from the field by 4 mm.
30 August 2026 13 h CNY 190-260
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After
Three mahogany occasional tables with a French-polished finish that had gone cloudy white across the tops and had worn through to bare veneer along every edge. Six body coats went back on, and the whole job is really about grain filler rather than polish.
1 September 2026 12 h CNY 200-280
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After
A Thonet-style bentwood chair that had been dipped in black lacquer at least twice, the second time without cleaning the first. Took a caustic tank to get it off, which is the only job here where caustic was the right answer.
4 September 2026 8 h CNY 220-300
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After
A country-made oak press with a detachable cornice and original linen-fold panels. The finish was dirty and patchy, not failed, which made this the one job on the bench where the right answer was almost no abrasives at all.
21 September 2026 15 h CNY 180-250
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After
An end-grain block that had been scrubbed with too much water and oiled too little. The cutting face was fine; the failure was at the joints between the staves, where water had been getting in for a decade. Food-safe finish throughout.
28 September 2026 9 h CNY 300-420
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After
A Danish-style rosewood table with a top that had been wrecked by a hot coffee pot and a spilled drink, and a colour that had gone almost black. Rosewood punishes over-sanding more than any timber on this bench, so this job was mostly about restraint.
5 October 2026 11 h CNY 260-380
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After
The doors were a mess and the case was fine, which is the ideal version of this job. Stripping flat doors on a bench is easy work. Stripping them while they are still hung on a case that must not get wet is a different problem, and that is what this record is mostly about.
7 October 2026 22 h CNY 420-560
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After
A boarded elm coffer with its original iron banding and a lid that had been sat on for three centuries. The correct treatment was almost entirely cleaning — no stripping, no sanding of the surface, no attempt to make 1700 look like 2026.
12 October 2026 6 h CNY 90-160
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After
A pine chest with at least four paint layers, the oldest of which was almost certainly lead-based. This record starts with the test, because on painted furniture the test is the first tool you pick up, not the last.
19 October 2026 18 h CNY 220-320
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After
A rocker where the bends were perfect and the seat was gone. The frame needed nothing but cleaning; the seat needed rebuilding from scratch, and the fabric had to be woven under tension onto a frame that is itself under tension.
24 October 2026 14 h CNY 200-300
Before
After
Nine-tenths of the gilding on this console was intact and worth keeping. Regilding the whole frame would have taken a genuinely old surface and made it new. This job was about repairing the tenth, and about knowing the difference between dirt and lost gold.
26 October 2026 20 h CNY 600-900
Nothing on the bench matches that probe.
The two families behave differently in ways that decide whether a job takes two hours or eight. Gel stays where you put it and works slowly; solvent flashes off and works fast. Choosing wrong is the most common reason a first refinishing job goes badly.
7 September 2026 #stripper#solvent#gel#dcm#safety
A grit sequence is not a list of abrasives to own, it is a chain of scratch sizes where each step exists only to erase the one before. Break the chain and you spend longer sanding, not less.
10 September 2026 #sanding#abrasives#grit#scratch-pattern#random-orbit
A wiping varnish is an ordinary oil-polyurethane varnish thinned far enough that it can be applied with a rag. It builds slowly and it cannot be applied too thickly, which is exactly why it is the finish most likely to come out well on a first attempt.
13 September 2026 #varnish#oil-poly#wiping#film-finish#sheen
French polishing is shellac applied with a cloth pad instead of a brush, in very thin coats, over many sessions. The technique is learnable in an afternoon. What takes years is reading when a surface is ready for the next stage.
23 September 2026 #shellac#french-polish#pad#rubber#film-finish#repair
Wood filler replaces missing timber. Grain filler closes open pores so a film finish sits flat. Using one where the other belongs is the single most common reason a refinished top looks amateur under a gloss finish.
2 October 2026 #filler#pore#grain#pumice#timbermate#refinishing
A white haze in a fresh lacquer coat is not a bad batch of lacquer and it is not dirt. It is water, trapped in the film, and it has a specific set of causes and a specific set of fixes, in a specific order.
10 October 2026 #lacquer#blush#moisture#spraying#humidity#retarder
Oak and maple can take the identical finish, applied identically, and one will look right while the other looks cheap. The difference is pore structure, and it decides both the finish you choose and whether you fill at all.
21 October 2026 #pore#grain#open-pore#closed-pore#timber-species#finish-choice
The same chair joint reglued three times will fail a fourth unless something changes. This note covers the four reasons a mortise and tenon keeps loosening and what to do about each one, in the order you should check them.
17 September 2026 #mortise-tenon#hide-glue#draw-bore#chair#structural
A lifted veneer bubble is almost always a glue failure, not a veneer failure, and it is usually re-layable. The whole job is getting glue into a gap you cannot see and clamping it flat without squeezing the glue back out.
26 September 2026 #veneer#lifting#hide-glue#clamping#veneer-press
Gluing a split in a solid tabletop back together without acknowledging why it split is a repair with a known expiry date. A butterfly key, cut across the grain, is the traditional answer and it is the right one more often than the modern alternatives.
16 October 2026 #butterfly-key#dutchman#split-top#breadboard#hide-glue#structural
Stripped & Stained · [email protected] Refinishing information only — not professional, conservation or safety advice. Content is for general informational and reference purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.