Møller 66 chair transformed by oiling

This is one of a set of four chairs that I recently got to restore.  Three of them were ok but this one had some serious-looking something going on in the back.

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It looked like someone had poured some kind of solvent over the back—something that immediately broke down the oil finish and left the wood bare and dry.  I thought at first that the wood was actually bleached and that color in the form of a wood stain, or something, would have to be applied in order for it to look like teak again and not driftwood!

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You can see the well-defined drip marks in the underside of the lower back on the left.  Alcohol and acetone will do this but who knows what really happened.  It was strange.

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Yes, this is the same chair!  And all it took to get it to look like this was oil and #0000 steel wool!  The wood wasn’t bleached, or at least not much.  It was mostly just really, really dry.  I did have to oil it a few times over the course of a week or two.

moller83-07Extreme close-up.  The other odd thing was that some of the light areas were really well-defined but others look more like the color had worn off where the chair had been handled a lot—which of course wasn’t the case because that’s not how it works with teak.  I’d never seen anything like it.

moller83-08Some of it refused to disappear completely but it was pretty close.

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Another shot.

 

moller83-06 The other thing is that the teak went from having a very yellowish cast to this gorgeous, deep aged teak color.  That was a huge relief too, since the other three were already close to this when I got them.

Oh yeah, and I rewove the seats on all four.

moller83-01 moller83-02(that’s actually not the same chair but the seats all look the same!)

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