The proper way to care for your antique and modern furniture.
Furniture Care
When I asked people about furniture care, they always respond by telling me how they wax or polish. Although these are accepted methods for raw wood furniture, most people forget that the majority of wood furniture nowadays has a finish on it. These finishes are a film finish and lay on top of the wood. They are not and should not be treated like raw wood. Raw wood is cleaned and waxed with a synthetic paste, bees wax or oil, producing what is known as a wood penetrating finish. A wax finish sealed the wood by penetrating it and closing off any small holes. However, modern film finishes leave a clear top coat over the wood, similar to placing a clear piece of plastic on top of a wood table. Using a wax on modern finishes is like cleaning a window with a stick of wax. First you coat it with wax and then you rub it back off again, eventually you remove all the wax and then it is clean. Since most modern film finishes composition are based in oil products the best way to clean them is with a light amount of oil-based cleaner on a soft cloth. Your goal is to only tack off any dust that may have settled on the furniture since the last dusting. Since oils and soaps are designed to attract dirt to them, you should use them sparingly. If you put too much cleaner on the finish it will attract more dirt and need to be cleaned more often. If you use too little oil, you can scratch the finish with the cloth and any dust that has attached to it. Take in mind that a piece of sandpaper is nothing more then a piece of paper or cloth with sand stuck to it, and dust is like sand. So another misleading marketing is to use a dry cloth to whip off the dust and the dust sticks to the cloth, the cloth becomes sand paper. Another conventional way of cleaning is the use of a damp cloth. This is a method used to clean waxed furniture and should never be used on modern finishes. The problem with using a damp cloth on a table top is that the finish is not water resistant and each time you get it wet you are risking damage to the finish. This would equate to leaving a glass of ice on your dining room table. Just the condensation on the outside of the glass will leave a white ring on your table. This white ring is nothing more than thousands of microscope holes in the finish where the water droplets have penetrated and evaporated. Keep in mind that water is the strongest solvent known to man. There are some new finishes, like conversion varnish, that is more durable and resistant to water, however even they will breakdown over time.
The most common method to clean wood furniture currently used is the so called over the counter “furniture polishes”. These items claim to clean and polish your furniture. However, if you read the ingredients, you will find that almost all “polishes” are primarily paint thinner or some other solvent. Some even claim to treat or condition your wood, this is not likely since in order to do that it would need to break down your current finish to get to the wood to treat it. Caveat emptor should be printed on all over-the-counter cleaner isles in most stores. Since these items are not consumed they can promote the items with any marketing claim. One of my favorites to tell people about is the most common furniture polish on the market. If you pull up its material data sheet you find that its ingredients consist of Propane, Butane, Silicone, Isoparaffinic hydrocarbon solvent, and water. So the products you are spraying in your house, to clean your furniture, consist of cooking gas, an airborne carcinogen, grease and water. And we call this ‘polish’. Another example happened just recently, I picked up a can of polish, on the outside of the container it read ‘made with 100% beeswax’ however when I turned the can around it had a warning “Petroleum dissolute, Flammable”. When was the last time you saw bees wax bubbling up out of the ground and catching fire? What is also humorous is that although wax has been added to solvent based cleaners to give the illusion that it is a wax cleaner, the fact is paint thinner and solvents dissolves and evaporates wax so each time you use this polish you are removing wax from the can and putting it into the air. The justification of the over the counter furniture polish is that the solvents used are designed to be used to clean the many of the popular lacquer finishes being used. Since most new furniture has a lacquer finish, solvent-based cleaners are acceptable for general cleaning furniture. However, there are thousands of types of lacquer, and cleaners are only designed for the most popular ones. Truth is any high grade mineral spirit on a soft cloth creates a tack cloth that can then be used on a lacquer finish to remove dust without damaging the finish. The real problems come about once they start adding things like scents, colors, drying agents and silicones to over the counter cleaners. I highly recommend avoiding any cleaners with silicone, although it creates a temporary shine by leaving a greasy residue on your furniture it causes long term damage to your furniture finish.
An additional dilemma in using over the counter ‘polishes’ is that most homes have furniture with different finishes: shellac, polyurethane, varnish, ultra violet, wax or oil finishes on them. These cleaners are not designed for these types of finishes and will damage them. Although mineral spirits do not dissolve most lacquers, it is a primary solvent used to dissolve polyurethane and varnish. So using it, even sparingly, will remove your finish over time. This will be addressed in detail in my book “The truth about antiques” coming out next year.