Black Beams - Paint removal

[whiskeyfrank]

My Maiden post - so bear with me.

Ive moved to another timber framed but this one has many more beams than previously and they are very black!

I want to get them stripped and have looked at a few companies that do this sort of thing gently with little or no damage, one is the Farrow system from the US, has anyone used that system before?

Frank

 

[tobydog]

Hi Frank and welcome to PPUK. The first thing to be clear on is exactly what the beams are covered with and how much house disruption you are willing to put up with to remove it.

The Farrow System looks to be simple sand blasting but using recycled glass instead. Some systems recover the debris during the process but others can be like being in a sand storm and you can't live in the house when it's done. Sandblasting, however gently it's done, will also remove a certain amount of character from the old timbers.

If you can confirm the coating and maybe post some photos, someone else who has done this will probably be along shortly. There are less aggressive systems out there that use a kind of poltice. Kingslip is one and comes /or came from a company called Strippers. They may have changed their name recently. There are other powerful solvents sold only to professionals although I've managed to get some and I'm certainly not a professional. Just read the safety leaflet because this is seriously bad stuff.

 

[skier-hughes]

Klingstrip, from http://stripperspaintremovers.com/ is an excellent product, but extremely hard work.
To preserve the wood this would be an great way of doing it, but if you do it yourself, it takes a long time, best completed with their vacwash, a decent powerwasher and a big wet vacuum.
I've done this, but it really is hard work.
It hasn't put me off doing all of my house though, so gradually I work through room by room.

 

[Toby Newell]

I do this for a living, well, partly, I am a wood restorer and I have stripped a fair few beams, including some for the owner of this very site, but I would not recommend it (from a health viewpoint) as the last time I did it it gave me severe RSI. Mind you, I did do 200 linear meters of heavily nail infested beams so the level of my madness was quite severe. I soon realised (being my largest ever beam stripping job) that it was a quite stupid thing for me to have agreed to do and that I joked I would end up crippled and make no profit, which was indeed the case, but me being me I went ahead and did it anyway as I stick to my word. Still the results, apart from a year of severe pain, was sort of worth it. In a mad way.

To advise further I need pictures, timber species (it's going to be oak, elm or possibly pitch pine) and age of property and whether there are lot of extraneous fixings and what the extent of the worm damage is.

I would not advise blasting of any sort. EVER. Much like I would never even approach a period antique with a sander. For me there are only three options, if the beams are reasonably new, large, flat, with few extraneous fixings and in sound condition with little worm damage and low friability then a poultice type caustic stripper like the ones the much vaunted (on here) Strippers of Sudbury do may be applicable, with a light scrape and sand to finish after neutralising although this may darken the wood in places, okay if you are not clear finishing.

I always hand scape then use small hand held sanders to strip my beams still retains massive patination and no risk of chemical staining so I can clear coat / light shellac tint before waxing. If your beams are small in section, are friable, heavily worm damaged then a poultice stripper is no good, either you go the hand scrape / sanding route or just clean them up and paint / lime wash them as to sand blast these type of beams would ruin them.

The work is incredibly hard but the results well, as I always say to my customers when their jaw drops, it's not really me, it's the wood, there is only one thing that looks like a cleaned up and hand polished several hundred year old beam. And that's another cleaned up and hand polished several hundred years old beam.

But, if you have a slightly less ridiculous amount of beams to do then give it a go, it is incredibly satisfying as I said the results (on oak and especially elm) are fairly high on the spectacularometer, as this brief email testifies (I must point out that the customer did indeed thank me at the time also!)

"Toby,

About a year has passed since you finished work here and I just wanted to drop you a (slightly inebriated ) note to say I am looking at the beams and floor that you did for us and remain stunned at the glow that I'd coming out of the wood.

A very sincere thAnks for all the work you put into our house ( despite difficult working conditions)"

(Name witheld to protect the slightly sozzled)

TOP TIP. Seeing as the work (if you do it sympathetically) is so time consuming and hard why not confide your stripping to a few 'show beams' like the bressummers, large uprights and ones over the fire hearth and leave the smaller beams in-between as the larger beams are often easier to do and you will get more 'bang for your buck'

TOP TIP No2. If your beams are several hundred years old you may want to carefully go round with a powerful torch, especially on the bressummers to doorways and over the main hearth and you may find ancient 'warding marks' or builders markings, it may be a shame to remove these during restoration (I certainly think so) if you identify any before you start you can sand carefully around them and very gently restore this section. Something not really possible with an industrial blasting machine.

If you decide to do them, good luck and again, whatever you do, unless the beams are large and in very sound condition and / or fairly young, please do not blast them in any way. In general wood does like being blasted.


Toby Newell

 

[skier-hughes]

I agree with Toby it is back breaking work, working on overhead beams, but it depends on whose pace you work to, Toby, working for a customer needs to get it done in a reasonable amount of time, whereas I work to Graham Time, so a beam a day is the most I do.
Apply klingtrip, cover, leave, next day remove and wash many many times. Take a break, put stripper on next beam, wash first beam a few more times and clean out work holes etc.
You can use it on beams with character, worn and funny in shape, it just takes even more time effort and being prepared to deal with more mess.

It's no good trying to do this in a room you are using as you do get a fair amount of water everywhere, however hard you try.
And don't try and do it in this weather, the klingstrip will dry out before it's done it's job and you'll melt trying to clean it off.

 

[tobydog]

Graham - I got tongue tied just try to say Kingslip, Kingstrip and/or Klingstrip. Glad we got there in the end :lol:

 

[skier-hughes]

I gathered Only went and typo'd it first time round myself

 

[Toby Newell]

Klingstrip / Kingflip whatever. Is caustic. Very. pH 12 to 14 I would have thought from my days in research institutes. Sodium or Potassium hydroxide I would imagine.

Sodium or Potassium hydroxide EATS organic matter, including wood.

Please feel free to apply to your swiss cheese of a munched worm ridden beam, with all that surface area, it's a free country, but personally I would not advise it.

And btw. One beam a day? Pfffft. I was doing that job for several months. One beam a day would have been positively fast. And a few months was a reasonable amount of time. Considering I had no light, heat and at one point no windows. In January.

I did however have a lime plasterer with a similar sense of humour who was about the only insane tradesman to keep me company working in such conditions. Next time I will just employ skier-hughes...

 

[skier-hughes]

Well I'm just giving the benefit of my experience as you were yours.
If it's removed from the wood properly, how can it eat it? Though I don't doubt your science.
I did one beam a day, each beam was 7 feet, 4"x4"
After 6 years they are still all there, here's a picture.

 

[Carol]

Would echo Toby's comments about how hard job of beam cleaning can be. Managed only one before throwing in towel and throwing cash at the builder who lovingly brass brushed every one. I was lucky, they were just filthy but unpainted.

 

[Bayliss]

Has nobody tried soda blasting- seems to me to be the solution.

 

[whiskeyfrank]

Thanks for the advice, im not sure how to insert pictures though.

I have 3 rooms all with beams on ceiling and walls, the house was built in 1624 and was originally 3 cottages and 2 barns, there is a real mix of beams some are old ships beams as there are markings, some are what can only be described as tree trunks. A few are flat and smooth but lots are very knurled or rough texture. They are painted with gloss back paint.

I wont sand blast them as i know thats awful, but 2 different methods seem to be sold as safe for the wood, using pumice and steam (farrow) and the other im not sure (protinus)

To strip the lot would take me years im guessing.

 

[Keithj]

Mine were black when we moved in, and still are. We've learned to live with it. Having gone through the disruption of replacing all the sole plates and a fair proportion of the timbers in the lower walls, I'm taking a 20-year rest from major repair works.

 

[Cottage cosy]

I don't tend to post much on here but thought I would thrown in my own experience.

Despite what everyone says, we sandblasted our beams. We purchased the compresser/ recycled glass and did it ourselves. Yes it took AGES, yes it's a messy job but no it absolutely did not destroy the character of the beams. Doing it ourselves with a small, focused nozzle meant we didn't over sand delicate areas. The areas where the sandblaster couldnt get the paint out without damaging the wood we left; this means the odd speck of paint here and there but I am happy with this given the difference between start and finish. I know sandblasting gets a bad name because often people employ companies who rock up and get the job done as quickly as possible, without the care and attention you would put in yourself.

Our reason for choosing this was cost, the lack of nasty chemicals and water (which wouldnt have done the delicate wood/ building much good) and the fact that we could take our time over it. Downsides were definitely the rotator cuff injury I sustained from continuous work above my head, although I'm sure this would have been the case whichever method we used! We have a lot more beams to go and are considering using an initial chemical stripper to remove the really thick stuff but I would urge you not to completely write off sand blasting.

 

[88v8]

Wouldn't touch our beams with sand blasting, the outer eaten areas would be destroyed.

If you want to blast them then this company will do no damage, and the operators will clean up after themselves.
Approved by Conservation Officers, which sand blasting certainly is not.
http://www.blast-cleaning.co.uk/index.php?menuid=120&component=content&task=article&articleid=21

Ivor

 

[Toby Newell]

Poultice stripper can work yes, it depends on how 'holy' your wood is, sound wood would fare better, I still maintain it is more destructive to the wood as not only do you have the mechanical process of removing the stripper and applied finish / scraping out the holes etc... you have the chemical reaction element. I am just giving my opinion Skier-hughes and yours is, in fact, arguably more informed as I have NEVER ever applied a poultice stripper to anything (neither my Grandfather or any of the several hundred French polishers I have met over the last 25 years, at least on the jobs I was working with them) and I would never!

I am just saying it is not correct for all. And soda blasting smashting!!! really!!! It's a MECHANICAL PROCESS THAT REMOVES THE APPLIED FILM BY HITTING THE SURFACE WITH ABRASIVE PARTICLES!!! It removes part of the substrate and the force of it damages delicate parts!!! There are degrees of severity but basically they are all VERY similar. As a direct comparison, you can get shot with lead or steel shot OR with salt, the salt won't kill you, but it will still bloody hurt!!! The analogy being, in my humble opinion, don't use a gun.

I have experience of customers who employed a company to blast their beams who ruined them, they looked awful, mind you, the beams were over 500 years old, more sound beams will obviously fare better, the surface will still require sanding afterwards to reveal a perfectly flat and smooth surface. The feel of the beams is one of the most important attributes, the feel of a several hundred year old oak or elm beam should be that of warm granite!!! Perfectly smooth and wonderfully smooth and dense.

Good luck with that after your 'gentle blasting company TM' has left your beams perfectly clean (is that a good thing?) with the surface texture of fuzzy felt.

So, if you have to sand afterwards er... why not just, I don't know, sand and cut out the extra cost of the blasting and the extra damaging???? All in my humble pedantically logical opinion of course.

I also had a customer who got a company to remove the bitumen off their reclaimed parquet blocks who claimed their blasting technique was gentle, well they seriously damaged the blocks and after checking with me the customer asked them to leave, we hand scraped the blocks one at a time which was very very hard and painstaking work but THATS kind of the point people.

Restoration IS hard work, there are few quick fixes and I am sorry, BLASTING is not a word that exists in my restoration vocabulary or in the vocabulary of any wood restoration craftsman I have ever met, that is not to say it may occasionally be appropriate.

This of course, is all my humble opinion, all I am saying is, unlike your hair, 500 year old beams do not grow back, so, you know, if the 'gentle blasting company TM' accidentally removes significant portions of historical character from your beams, that's it.

 

[Toby Newell]

Has nobody tried soda blasting- seems to me to be the solution.

If that's the answer, I don't want to know the question...

 

[Ebenezer]

Thanks for the advice, im not sure how to insert pictures though.

I have 3 rooms all with beams on ceiling and walls, the house was built in 1624 and was originally 3 cottages and 2 barns, there is a real mix of beams some are old ships beams as there are markings, some are what can only be described as tree trunks. A few are flat and smooth but lots are very knurled or rough texture. They are painted with gloss back paint.

I wont sand blast them as i know thats awful, but 2 different methods seem to be sold as safe for the wood, using pumice and steam (farrow) and the other im not sure (protinus)

To strip the lot would take me years im guessing.

We have tree trunks too. One of them has quite a considerable curve! It makes me wonder how they managed to fit them all together in such a way that they are still standing 3/4 hundred years later!

All mine are gloss black. You can still see all the tool marks and notches and scratches on them. I wouldn't want to change them I like them black.

 

[Bayliss]

Has nobody tried soda blasting- seems to me to be the solution.

If that's the answer, I don't want to know the question...

I am truly surprised that nobody seems to be picking up on this relatively new method of cleaning. Maybe because people are unsure and think its a harsh unforgiving cleaning method? its not, its as delicate as you could wish for and the perfect solution to paint removal from timbers. Unless the timber is extremely crumbly to the outer surface no damage will occur.

 

[Toby Newell]

lol.

That was an ironic lol.

No, to be fair it is only 40 years old, which is relatively new compared to sand blasting but not compared to sand/water vortex blasting which many companies offer as being more gentle.

Whilst I heartily disagree with it being as 'delicate as you could wish for', I do agree it may be an excellent solution to larger sound beams. They will still need sanding afterwards as the surface will not be perfectly smooth, but that's fine.

What I am trying to do Bayliss is try and avoid people making mistakes they cannot recover from. Many people have 200, 300, 400 and over 500 year old beams, many will be worm and beetle eaten to some degree and much of this damage may not be apparent as it may be hidden under layers of thick paint, if one were to use ANY BLASTING method then the danger here is irrevocable damage may have taken place before the this is established.

So yes, it MAY prove to be an excellent solution on sound timbers to stripping thick film finishes but caution should be advised as any blasting method will break off and damage friable sections, this is more due to the force created from the gun rather than the hardness of the abrasive.

Zirconia is MUCH harder than silicon sand but if I put a piece of zirconia based sandpaper onto your hand and press gently it will hurt much less than the same grade of cheap glass paper if I press more heavily. Soda blasting removes less of the substrate in thickness, yes, so surface patination and colour are retained more compared to other blasting methods, this is indeed good, BUT unfortunately the little exploding bicarbonate crystals cannot hide from Newton's third law.

So, from a restorers point of view. Soda blasting, the most gentle form of blasting you can get and may be very good for sound timbers with just one caveat. The clue is in the name, it is still blasting and may still be destructive to the more delicate older beams, also one has to factor in the mess, sanding is messy but not a patch on blasting which, I would imagine would entail serious preparation to protect a currently lived in property.

T