removing surface of Palladian Moulding

[Gillthepainter]

I've got a lot of Palladian white moulding. On offer, seemed like an excellent buy.
But I have gone off the white look of it for my pictures. https://www.lionpic.co.uk/p/34090/53mm- ... -Mix-70---

However, it does suit nicely when it is sanded down to the light pine wood. But it's a bit of a dirty faff (I've got one of those sanders that is the shape of an iron).
Part of it is a curved surface too.

The result when sanded so far is more a distressed look. Still, better than the all white finish.

Is there a product out there that will remove the white surface please?
I've just bought some paint stripper, to see if that has an effect.

Thanks in advance.

[Not your average framer]

The wood used for this moulding is finger jointed durium, which is used as far eastern substitute for pine. It's quite wide grained and the finger joints are likely to be rather obvious in such a wide grained wood with almost certainly not much grain alignment across the finger joints in the wood. I'm not convinced that you will be too happy with the appearance of the moulding after removing the finish.

You might be spending time and money stripping back the finish, only to wonder why you went to all that amount of trouble for no obvious gain. Maybe you could use the existing finish as a base coat for creating another finish over the top of this original finish. Before you go ahead and strip all of this moulding, may I suggest that you try it of one length only and see what it looks like, before you strip the finish off the remaining lengths.

[Gillthepainter]

Thank you for that excellent bit of advice. You are spot on about the time element.
In my previous inexperience, I've tried putting things onto mouldings surfaces, with varying success.

At the moment, I'm doing an experiment with some chopped pieces.

I have to keep my frames pretty light anyway (in colour) as they simply do not sell with dark frames.

[Not your average framer]

I would not completely rule out what you are thinking, but you should consider your options and what will work out best for you. Assuming that you still wanted to strip off the existing finish, one option would be to use a light acrylic stain varnish and add a very small amount of acrylic white paint. This would need to be not so much as to make the stain varnish completely opaque, but just to make it misty enough to make it less easy to be able to distinguish the finger joints as much as normal.

If you were still looking for the finger joints, you would still be able to spot the joins between portions of grain that don't completely line up, it won't be totally invisible, if you are looking for it, but it might be a lot less obvious. Something like lime white should be suitable for making the acrylic stain varnish a little misty, don't use titanium white as that is quite opaque and would be far to easy to over do the amount required for just adding a just enough for the right level of mist effect.

[prospero]

Paint stripper is a big faff. Very time-consuming and extremely messy.

Caustic soda would probably shift it, but you need a long tank. It's also VERY HAZARDOUS.
As well as that, if it is finger-jointed then it will dissolve the glue and you will end up with a lot of short bits.

If you sand it lightly and give it a coat of shellac, that will bond to the moulding and form a surface that water-based
paints will grip onto. Then you can use your creative imitative.

[Gillthepainter]

Hello Prospero, and Mark.

I did manage to get it off, using my Dremmel. But as you both say, what a mess and a faff. And the surface wasn't perfect.



I like the idea of using shellac after a sanding, for a key.
That's certainly worth a shot, better than what I tried just now.

[prospero]

Shellac is magic stuff. It's organic, so has different properties to synthetic varnishes. It will stick to practically
anything and is porous, so water-based paints will 'stick' on top properly. Generally, only a light sanding of a finished
moulding is required. This will work on most mouldings but there are a few finishes that defy all efforts to apply
finishes on top. Test a bit first. If you can't scrape the applied finish off with a fingernail then you know the bond
is sound.

[Not your average framer]

If you look at the information for this moulding, it says that the base finish is Trafila. This is a thin surface filler, which gives a very smooth surface for the final finish. It fills imperfections and with some woods which are difficult to obtain a satisfactory finish on, it renders such woods as usable at reasonable production costs, where this might not otherwise be the case.

Be warned that getting a good surface finish on the wood, may present more difficulties than you might be thinking. This may not be relavent, but from memory Unique Mouldings produces a very similar profile in bare wood, should this be of interest.

[Gillthepainter]

Update: In the end, I've given up.
The finish was too rough, my own inabilities, and not your advice given.

I guess I could have worked with shabby chic, but my paintings struggle to sell within those sorts of frames when I've tried before.
And I've simply ended up reframing them.

I was rather impressed with shellac crystals tho. Not for this job, but I've just used it on grey board before painting it (I was also given advice here that grey board is indeed paintable for mounts, and it works wonderfully well.

PS, I may just use the mouldings as stretchers for canvases, since roughly sanded down, that appearance will not matter under canvas material.
And the raised edging detail that I do not like as a frame, will lift the canvas proud of the stretcher bars.