Soaking in acetone?

I made a small 6”x9”x1" highly detailed cnc carving out of some Brazilian cherry and like a doofus I sprayed it with poly. Hate the look.. Can I soak the piece in acetone to strip the finish without damaging the wood?

A regular stripper might be a better choice than Acetone unless the "poly" you used is water borne where it might take it off...slowly with time.

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Originally Posted by Bruce Page

I made a small 6”x9”x1" highly detailed cnc carving out of some Brazilian cherry and like a doofus I sprayed it with poly. Hate the look.. Can I soak the piece in acetone to strip the finish without damaging the wood?

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At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd use an NMP-based paste stripper.

There are some strippers on the market that are basically mixtures of ketones (of which acetone is one example), but I don't think those would be the best choice here.

No, straight solvents drive some of the coating into the timber. Use a regular paint stripper. Cheers

I’ll look for a thin bodied stripper. There’s a lot of nooks & crannies in the carving that a thick bodied paste might be hard to remove from.

Thanks for the replies.

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Originally Posted by Bruce Page

I’ll look for a thin bodied stripper. There’s a lot of nooks & crannies in the carving that a thick bodied paste might be hard to remove from.

Thanks for the replies.

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I would imagine that a paste could be easily removed from any geometry that a CNC router can produce. Most of them wash off with water.

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Originally Posted by Patrick Chase

I would imagine that a paste could be easily removed from any geometry that a CNC router can produce. Most of them wash off with water.

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I'm not so sure. The dark area in the pic tapers down almost an inch.

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Originally Posted by Bruce Page

I'm not so sure. The dark area in the pic tapers down almost an inch.

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Sure, but if it was produced on a CNC router then it had to be accessible from above by an end mill. All you need is a tool with a narrower tip than that cutter. Stripper-softened finish doesn't require much scraping, so I imagine that you could shape/sharpen the tip of something like a plastic mixing stick and be good to go.

Also, you have an advantage here in that you can come in from arbitrary angles (like, say, from above and to the left of that dark area) whereas the router can only orient the cutter vertically (unless it has a 4th axis of course).

I will give it a go. I don't think it's imperative that the bottom of the hole be perfect anyway. :)