lol I picked up a maple table on the weekend. someone put it out by the curb and a friend needs one. upon closer inspection I think mine is from a particle tree
so at least yours is wood !
chlorine bleach is only the same in name, wood bleach is Oxalic acid. You should be able to get it in the box stores it might be sold as "wood brightener"
I believe the same chemical is used in dying wool, as a "mordant" which is a chemical which "fixes" the die, meaning makes it permanent.
rhubarb has a lot of oxalic acid in it. My mom used to be really into natural dies for wool as she was a weaver and spinner. I can renumber her boiling down rhubarb leaves and all sorts of different plants. now I can sort of piece together why she did that.
I got mine from Mohawk finishing supplies and it came as a paint can full of white powder.
If the table is a bit wavy and you don't want to plane it you could perhaps try to board sand it , you can glue a full sheet of paper to a flat board and sand with that so it can only take the high spots.
if you know it's a bit wavy and dont' want to mess about I'd pick a less glossy coating. you can always do a clear coat of Matte or semi gloss over your other finish so long as it's compatible. that way the waviness wont' be too obvious.
If I spray stuff with lacquer, because I don't have a spray booth I sometimes get a little dust or runs. what I like to do is let it set up good and then I use fine steel wool and "wool soap" its a special slippery soap for this purpose. some use a potato sack and some pumice to do the same. especially with antiques they look funny if they have a showroom shine on them. Knocking back the sheen usually makes the refinishing look more natural.
might be difficult now to find a potato sack that is actually still made with burlap. I dont; know if they were originally jute or hemp or what but you get the idea I'm sure. Makes me wonder where all the burlap trees are
here's the wool lube product, you might even try dish soap to see if that would work in a similar way. It's like wet sanding with wet or dry paper it makes it cut much better and has the effect of making a smoother finish with the same grit or in this case, the same coarseness of the wool.
http://www.mohawk-finishing.com/catalog ... ictNbr=243if you put polyurathane on the top you wont; have to worry so much about water or plants and such. I know it isn't the favorite finish I'd never use it on anything valuable but sometimes it's ok for a kitchen table that you want to wet wipe often and if you want to do the wool lube thing with that you can actually use the same thing that they use to thin the poly - paint thinner! this caught me by surprise because one day I'm adding it to the finish to thin it and then the very next day wet sanding with paper soaked with the paint thinner.
the reason you can get away with it is because the poly hardens by a chemical reaction called polymerization. The reason why you'd want to use that is because the poly takes a week or two to harden up, and if you attempt to sand it it balls up on the paper as it's still too soft to sand. youd be frustrated and throwing out your sandpaper every three strokes. the paint thinner stops it from balling up on the paper. this means you can do a little sanding to knock out the dust etc and continue to do more coats while the poly is still soft. It knits together if you get the coats down in succession but if you let it cure and recoat then the layers of poly only stick to each other by mechanical means. that's ok that's how most paints stick. That's a mechanical bond not a chemical bond,, plastic paint might knit chemically much like the coats of poly.
shellac and lacquer are quite diferent because with those finishes subsequent coats melt in to the previous coats and "amalgamate" most paints also do not amalgamate. one exception is lacquer paint.
a little OT but I was moving stuff around the basement and came across a old 78 record that was broken. I snapped it into little pieces as I want ot try and experiment. I believe you can just add lacquer thinners to that and create your own black lacquer paint. its really no different than mixing your own shellac from cookies and chips or pucks.... free black paint made from broken records
I thought it was a pretty resourceful idea and sometimes they just come your way or you may see scratched up ones at the thrift that really have no marketable value. anyway Ill get back to that experiment,,, and I guess we should return to the thread about the table..
Phil