Staining Floorboards Yes/No?

[Toby Newell]

ope the windows.... or open even, if that is easier.

And if you do not wish to waste valuable hours of your life reading my most excellent articles, then the quick advice is DCM solvent stripper and coarse wire wool, ALL French polishers use Trollul No. 6. Any finer and you are just wasting your time and money, it WILL leave tiny scratches a=on the surface but will strip the black stuff one hundred times faster.

Turn the wool frequently.

Leave to dry out, then shake out and reuse. (back in the day it was the apprentices job to take the bag of old wire wool back to the workshop and wash it out with used gun cleaner cellulose thinners for the next day, all without respirators of course...)

After you have stripped, water wash (if water washable, I use Paramose water washable stripper) or wash with meths then lightly sand the surface (it will still be greasy and you will need to remove the film before you apply the shellac for best adhesion and clarity) but not too lightly! Anything finer than P180 will just clog up (as will P180) so get yourself some P180 stearated silicon carbide paper (not glass paper or garnet that is very er 'scratchy!') or use a little random orbital with P180, on pine sanding higher than P180 is pointless as the resin will clogg the abrasive before you can sand anything off.

After applying your shellac (I apply three or four coats minimum, I would advise four) you can nib down inbetween coats with a P240 or P320 grit stearated (lubricated) sandpaper, try and find the more expensive sandpapers which will normally be blue r white or both colours these are lubricated and fracture exposes fresh surfaces and sand much much smoother when intercoat sanding.

I finish off with one or preferably two coats of either Mylands or Harrels (from Jenkins) traditional beeswax and carnuaba wax although Liberon Black Bison is good if rather expensive (it smells amazing though)

Sand the final coat very very gently with a bit of worn P320 or worn P400 stearated paper and apply the wax with 0000 grade wire wool and wipe and buff off straight away. Leaving a week in-between waxwings will be better as 1. You will knackered and 2. It will give the wax a time to harden off otherwise the second waxing will just dissolve the first. I don't advise Briwax or any horrible modern wax that contains toluene or driers but they do a similar job, just they don't smell nice, are worse for you and are not traditional and to me, they are harder to apply.

Anyway, have fun and I hope this helps.

 

[Svenedin]

Thank you for your tips. I have already realised that coarse wire wool is the way to go. I only had some 000 (from some french polishing work I had done) at home and this was next to useless so I went out yesterday and bought some coarse grade. I can't get hold of DCM strippers as those available to the DIYer have had the methylene chloride and DCM taken out but I have found that Paint Panther works quite well so I will try that. This is a washable stripper but as you say, it leaves a waxy residue. I have previously washed wood stripped with Paint Panther with water containing washing soda and this has worked well.

 

[Toby Newell]

you can get DCM stripper by phoning up the professional outlets like Mylands and Jenkins and promising not to drink it or lock yourself in a cupboard and inhales it, it is much, much better.

You can strip shellac with boiling hot washing soda and wire wool but but it will darken the pine as the alkaine solution s effectively a mild chemical stain, also be careful to clean up the wire wool fragments and not let them rest whist the water dries, they will leave little black marks as the metal rusts to form black iron 1 oxide (black rust)

 

[Svenedin]

Ok. I tried "Paint Panther" and it was absolutely hopeless. Worse than meths. It started to lift the black stuff but it clogged the wire wool with sludge and it was so waxy that it was a devil to wash off as well. I think I have some evil stripper in the garage somewhere ("Synstrip" DCM/phenol). I will try it but I am getting utterly fed up and disheartened (perhaps an effect of fumes). I will give it a few more hours but if I cannot see any reasonable progress I am going to resort to sanding. I will not be using an enormous drum machine but rather a hand held belt sander (a Makita one that is excellent). This gives a good degree of control and as I am so close to the work I think it gives a finish that could not be achieved with a huge machine.

 

[Moo]

I, too, have given up on Nitromors. But I've had much better results with a Rustins stripper - admittedly not on a floor.

 

[Keith Bowman]

For what it's worth, I have found that stainless steel kitchen pot scourers (the sort that look like coiled up drilling swarf but are much softer than that!) are the least likely to clog up when stripping paint/varnish. Not sure whether they are more or less expensive than steel wool, but they seem to last better.

 

[Svenedin]

Pot scourer is a good idea. I know the type that are stainless steel and have very open coils.

Trying a new technique which is to aggressively scrub the boards with a scrubbing brush and weak bleach solution. This takes a lot of the black much off.

 

[Toby Newell]

Pot scourers, well, yes, we have tried them, they leave more scratches and clog up very easily.

But you should of course try what works best for you.

Personally I have used dozens of kilos of wire wool and tens of gallons of DCM stripper over the last 25 years so I have a little experience of stripping. Nylon, steel, brass and grass brushes are all handy on vertical surfaces and mouldings but for floors wire wool is basically your best bet.

If you use boiling hot soda on shellac it will leave a deep colour on the surface and a waxy film, this can be great if you even it up like a stain and apply a wax afterwards. If you want something a little cleaner and fresher then you will have to use a solvent stripper.

You cannot buy solvent strippers anymore in the DIY shops so Nitromors contains no 'Nitromors' all water based strippers are various shades of useless on applied wood coatings although some of them remove paint quite well.

 

[Svenedin]

I have started sanding with my belt sander whilst a friend helped with the edges on the orbital sander. I started with 80 grit which was a joke so I tried 60 grit. That didn't work either so I am now using 40 grit. I had expected 40 grit to be much too coarse and make a mess but in fact the boards are almost polished by it. It seems pitch pine really is the hardest of all softwoods. So far 5 boards have had a first pass out of 32 and that took nearly a day. This is going to take a while.....

 

[Moo]

- but the result will be sooo worth while!

 

[Svenedin]

Yes it will look good. I discovered that the graphite pad under the belt was rather worn on one side so I changed it for a spare and the sanding has become easier. I am still finding that belts wear out very fast. They look OK but have lost their "bite" even after cleaning with a latex block. This may be due to the fact that I am using rather cheap belts from Toolstation. The decent belts are 3 times more expensive and seeing as the black stuff clogs the abrasive horribly I didn't think it was worth it.

I had a bit of an accident last night and a very silly one. I turned off the machine at the wall to change the belt but forgot that I had left it locked in the on position. I then turned the power on at the socket and it went over my thumb and collided with the skirting making a nice dent.

At least I have done enough now to see some good progress and I can start to decide whether I want to stain it before applying the finish. I don't want to leave this floor the natural colour as it is too light for a drawing room. I am leaning towards a fairly dark stain like Jacobean oak at the moment.

 

[Toby Newell]

In the future selling your belt sander and buying a powered random orbital like Bosch GEX150 turbo, Makita BO6040, Metabo SXE450 duo, Festool Rotex 150 will make sure 1. you dont hurt yourself, 2. You sand just as well. 2. You can sand finer 3. You have less marks and your abrasives are cheaper and last longer.

Belt sanders work on linear abrasive speed, you do not want that with pitchy pine and reversible coatings (means they go stciky when heated) belt sander is the WORST thing you could use, it will just clog and clog.

Yes, you are correct, buying more expensive belts would give poor return for your money as it will cog well before the abrasive is owen, in general though buying the best abrasives you can does make a big difference.

And yes, we have all done that with the belt sander...

I started off many years ago doing floors with a 4 inch belt sander and half sheet orbital sander... how I did floors with them was a mystery to me, but I did, so it is possible.

It is quite hard work is it not?

And yes, of course, anything you do yourself is worth it.

 

[Svenedin]

Hard work it certainly is!

The belt sander is working reasonably well on the boards that have no surface coating. It uses a 100 x 610mm belt. On the black edges (which extend at least 18 inches from the walls and the whole of a bay window area) I am using a DeWalt D26453 125mm random orbital that I got a deal on. It is a nice machine but not up to the standard of your suggestions (although not so expensive either). That Metabo looks good for the money. I am using the belt sander to (relatively) quickly sand what it can reach and then using the random orbital for anything more difficult. I will also use the random orbital to do the finer passes. For the awkward stuff in corners and around the radiator pipes I will use a detail sander.

 

[Svenedin]

Toby,

Just a follow up. My random orbital sander was just not powerful enough to cope with the black bitumen and although it worked progress was painfully slow. I decided that I have many other floors to do and I just can't waste my entire life sanding until my hands are tingling and numb from vibration. I had a look at your excellent suggestions. In the end I went for a DeWalt D26410. A 150mm random orbital with an interesting feature of being able to change the diameter of the orbit for rough or fine work. In other respects very similar to the Metabo but a bit more expensive.

 

[Toby Newell]

Yes, that is what I meant. A powered random orbital. Of which the one you bought is not really one, it's a sort of hybrid.

The real ones are the Festool Rotex (too expensive) the Bosch GEX150 Turbo (perfect, I have two of these) and the Makita BO6040 (slightly too dusty but cheaper) the Metabo SXE450DUO has a powered RO mode but it is a magnitude less powerful than the first three, still much better than a basic random orbital.

I do not have any DeWalt sanders as they, in my opinion, are very bad. In fact the only DeWalt tool I have is the famous DW707 mitre saw, the one thing they are good at. The only sander I bought from them in an emergency when sanding the Marriott Grosvenor Square floor broke in around 20 minutes of use. DeWalt is the professional arm of Black and Decker.

Luckily, it looks like you have actually bought a Metabo SXE450duo, just for more money and in yellow instead of green.

Metabo also make the sander for Mafel, so it is a good design and hopefully if DeWalt are using the same motor and bearings, just as long lasting.

But, you bought a Metabo, in DeWalt clothes. DeWalt do not make these sanders themselves.

Anyway, hope it helps and I hope my articles help.

There are all manner of old wives tales regarding bitumen removal, seeing as I have removed several hundred square meters of the stuff I have a reasonably informed opinion and that opinion is.... hire a 6 inch edge sander for £9 a day, buy a few boxes of P24, P40 and P60 discs and cut your sanding time by 90%.

It's not just an aesthetic issue, it's a technical one too.

If you just sand the bitumen off that can be problematical, because the solvents in the tar are completely compatible with the natural solvents in the pitch of the pine, therefore they leach into the wood and the pitch, this is invisible. What happens though (and I see this very frequently with previous jobs from the 'other' floor sanding companies) if you just sand the bitumen off is that when you overcoat the floor you will get the bituminous residue attacking the applied coating and bleaching it so that you will see lighter patches in stains or milky / greenish white patches in lacquer that lift and lead to localised loss of adhesion.

Therefore, if you are overcoating with anything other than clear wax, it is imperative that you sand further below the bitumen to clean the wood of the residue. The edge sander does this and if you are careful it does this just enough, so much so that you do not really take off more than you need and that you still retain the patination and colour of the wood and indeed even the surface patination.

You will need to see my floor sanding article and get a proper 6 inch edge sander from Lagler or Bona, do not get the ubiquitous Hiretech HT7 as it has about as much finesse as a sledgehammer.

 

[Toby Newell]

sorry, sometimes I get carried away with myself, I try and be objective, DeWalt sanders are not all 'very bad' it is just that they are not very good and I have had direct experience of one expiring on me after 20 minutes they are probably average but certainly not very good or perhaps even good.

Makita used to be good, I have had three BO6030's and 1 BO6040 when they were made in England, now I think they are made in Mexico and Brazil, at least I heard and I have heard the quality has gone down, Makita are always that little bit cheaper and their bearings were legendary, we have all seen the carpenter on site who has a 20 year old little Makita drill that he still uses. Just like cars really. The VW Transporter's reliability has always been legendary, even more so than my W902 Sprinter (well, apart from maybe the engine) but recently they switched production to either Mexico or Brazil (again!) and the quality has gone right down, I know as one of my best friends runs a garage I helped him set up.

Metabo are so so, they are German and some of their stuff is top notch like Bosch, just that they are a little variable, their table saws are sometime a bit off and I do not like the 'turbo' feature they have included on the updated 450duo, sounds like a DIY PR related gimmick to me, I want full power pretty much all the time. (The Bosch 'turbo' is not a feature just a silly name it just denotes it is the forced rotation and thus more powerful version of their 150mm RO sander)

All of my tools now are exclusively Bosch professional (blue) and Festool. Bosch are actually, in my opinion, slightly more reliable and rugged than Festool and normally around 30 - 40% cheaper for like for like. The thing Festool have on their side is clever design, much like Apple, everything just works together and they do little tricks that no other tools do, but, like Apple you pay a little for the name and their quality is not quite up to what you would expect but (again) like Apple you are stuck sometimes as no one else makes things quite like they do!

If you can return your DeWalt I would pay the extra for a BoschGEX150TURBO for £300, there is a company called FFX, Folkstone Fixings which last time I checked is selling a Festool Rotex, in a SYS3 Systainer for £343inc VAT, which might sound silly but the RRP is almost £500, I do not know how they are doing this but if you get one you will not be disappointed.

Anyway, good luck, I am sure my terrible DeWalt experience was just bad luck and seeing as it is effectively a Metabo SXE450 of the old design, it should last well.

Good luck. And yes, I know I am an anorak. On so so many things.

 

[Svenedin]

Haha no you are not an anorak or if you are I am one too. I have had bad experiences with Bosch tools (and dishwasher and a fridge) and I was so furious that their customer services didn't even bother to reply to my e-mail that I decided that I would never buy anything Bosch again. I had 2 cordless drills fail, the latter after only just over a year. It stopped working with a bang and a puff of smoke so I took it apart. I found that just one tiny, cheap (too cheap) component had burnt out (a MOSFET voltage regulator) but to fix the drill a whole new PCB was required at over £80. I bought a DeWalt that was on offer and I now have a DeWalt mains hammer drill as well that has had the most terrible abuse and for the £100 that it cost is a complete bargain. It is nothing compared to my father's Wolf mains drill that still goes well after 50 years.....

I take on board (terrible pun) what you say about the bitumen. It does tend to go oily and greasy and soak into the wood. It reminds me of creosote. I knew this would be a big problem with a water based stain so I hope it is back far enough now. I only just saw your reply and I am nearly done sanding now (hurray!) but for the next room (which is about twice the size) I will hire an edge sander. I just can't go through this again, I am having nightmares about black bitumen. You wouldn't like to hear what I call it. It isn't polite.

I also filled the gaps with reclaimed pine slivers which was good fun.

 

[Svenedin]

Some progress pictures.

1) Bay window area showing how the whole area had been stained black with bitumen. Tapered slivers made from reclaimed pine boards being used to fill gaps between boards


2) Excess height of slivers chopped off with a chisel prior to sanding


3) The result after a coarse (60 grit then 80 grit) sand). Getting there, finer grit passes needed.

 

[Svenedin]

4) Picture showing how far into the room the black stain went. Probably 3 feet.


5) How the stain has preferentially stained the softer younger wood on the edges of the boards. The heartwood takes up the stain much less. Looks like an older stain under the black bitumen. Very hard to get this off as it has really sunk in.

 

[Svenedin]

Toby,

You might be interested in my tales of woe with 6 inch random orbital sanders and there may be an element of "I told you so" on both our parts!

The DeWalt D26410 didn't seem to work well straight out the box. It wobbled horribly about the vertical axis, didn't pick up dust at all and due to the horrible wobble it ruined the Velcro on the base plate. After 3 days it was throwing off sanding discs all the time and was unusable. Of course it had to fail on a Saturday morning when there was no chance of getting a mail order replacement until in the week. It was important to have 2 orbital sanders because two of us were working at the same time. We had reached the finer grits and with one person having a head start the other could follow with the next grit up. The idea was that we would eventually reach the finest grit and at that point we would be working towards each other to meet in the middle.

I took the DeWalt back and there was no quibble about a refund (Screwfix) but they didn't have anything decent in stock and I really wanted to get the job finished. I went to a local power tool supplier and bought a Bosch GEX 125-150. Unlike the D26410 this worked beautifully out of the box and was a pleasure to use. However, after about an hour it chucked out the bolt holding on the base plate. No worries I thought and tightened it back up with the supplied Allen key. Twice more the bolt came loose so the third time I tightened it reasonably hard. All was well until another hour later when the bolt sheared off in the hole. Not good at all.

So I am now back to the DeWalt D26453 5 inch that has over the last year sanded 3 bedroom floors and most of the current job.

It really does infuriate me when tools let me down like this and it only reinforces your view that DeWalt don't make good sanders and my view that all Bosch stuff is unreliable.