Lessons Unlearned -- Blotchy European Beech

[Juan Hovey]

I posted a query some time back asking for input on finishing European beech -- and I return to this forum with a tale of woe, caused in large part by my own faulty memory.

Back then, having experimented with all sorts of finishes for some bedroom furniture, and following input from Shawn Pixley and Scott Holmes, among others, I settled on a wash of thinned shellac topped with a neutral gel stain of some sort, with pleasing results. Here's what one of the beds looks like now:

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Sad to say, I had long since begun applying a finish on a small table with a drawer for a client who sews and knits before I realized that in using oil atop a grain filler, I was making a grievous mistake, with blotchy results shown here:

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Here is what another of the table's aprons looks like after, I think, three hours of scraping, sanding, and spewing Spanish curses not heard since my sweet mom made prom dresses for my sisters:

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As you can see, them blotches don't wanna be excised.

Any suggestions for recovering from this embarrassing lapse of memory will be greatly appreciated.

[Wayne Lomman]

Have you used stripper yet? It may assist in removing the filler and oil. It is what I would have done first and then scraped and sanded following the stripper. Are you trying to achieve a stained finish or a natural finish? Cheers

[Juan Hovey]

Wayne - I had hoped to achieve a natural finish; my client had a houseful of dark antique furniture and wanted something light.

My first go-round didn't come close -- grain filler followed by Tried and True Varnish Oil wet sanded at 180 and 220 grit. I've used T&T Varnish Oil and Danish Oil on many other projects, always with good results. They just weren't appropriate for European beech, it seems.

To recover, I started with CitrisStrip with middling results, followed by hours of scraping with a card scraper, then more hours of sanding starting with 100-grit paper and progressing through 180-grit paper. I knew I had bare wood when the paper stopped loading with gook, but even at that point there remained a good deal of the original oil finish buried in the splotches. I decided nonetheless to risk applying a wash of thinned shellac followed by lots of gel stain. Result: OK surface overall, though not what I had hoped to see. I'll post pix later.