Victorian doors dipped in caustic soda - panels now splitting
RobertL
rest of the woodwork we stripped with a blow torch. The stripped
doors stood in the garden shed for several months, but we have now
brought a few of them in and rehung them. In many cases the wood
panels split from shrinkage in the hot dry house.
So the question is: has the dipping (in caustic soda I guess) made
them more vulnerable to splitting? and is there anything we can do to
reduce the risk, such as applying oil or something?
thank you,
Robert
Usenet Nutter
Is it the "inset" panels ( sometimes surrounded by
mouldings,particularly on the "good" side ) that have split?
I think only one of mine had this happen but as they were being
painted it didn't really matter . I suspect that part is made of an
inferior wood so maybe that is why it happens .....can't see any way
of replacing it either due to the way the door is constructed .
Andrew Gabriel
It's caused by the panels not being able to slide in the groves
in the timbers, so when the panel shrinks, it splits rather than
pulling out slightly from the surrounding timbers.
This is often due to painting or varnishing in the edges of the
panels, which has effectively glued the panel edges. If you
want painted panel doors, you would do much better to get modern
molded ones to start with. If you want to see the timber, then
you should probably wax them rather than varnish them.
I can't see how the dipping would cause this, unless it perhaps
expanded the panels more than they normally would, and they got
stuck in the expanded position in the side timbers, so they
couldn't shrink as they dried.
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
Usenet Nutter
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
>This is often due to painting or varnishing in the edges of the
>panels, which has effectively glued the panel edges. If you
>want painted panel doors, you would do much better to get modern
>molded ones to start with.
Problem being that if these doors are anything like the ones I have in
my Victorian flat then they are considerably larger than modern doors.
.
Andy Dingley
> So the question is: has the dipping (in caustic soda I guess) made
> them more vulnerable to splitting?
No, it was dipping them for too long in weak caustic soda that did
this, i.e. an exhausted or an unheated bath, where they were left in
too long to compensate.
There's little you can do about this. The real fix is to be more
careful about using a competent stripper.
A general problem with old doors is that they were built for higher
humidity than today, and better room sealing and lower humidity are
making them suffer. A good frame & panel construction survives this
(the panel can float free in the frame). If the panel is stuck in the
frame (nailed, or jammed with ancient paint) it can stress the panel
enough to crack it. Those cracks may be gluable, so long as you don't
glue the panel into the frame as well, "to fix it".
Bringing doors in from a cold, damp shed in this weather directly into
the house is pretty much calculated to split them. It would even have
been better to leave them in the shed until Spring.
Oiling and surface coatings won't do anything over a 3 month cycle,
such as winter weather. They'll reduce moisture movement over a daily
cycle, but over the whole season duration, nothing is going to seal it
for that long.
RobertL
Thank you all. This is interesting. We can certainly leave the
remaining doors in the shed until spring if it would help to dry them
out slowly. We want to keep the mas bare wood so filling is not
really an option.
We have upgraded the heating, so the hous eis probably hotter than it
was ever been which would make it dryer as well.
many thanks again.
Robert
RobertL
Also, every door is different. As someone else pointed out, they
have mouldings sometimes only on one side, just as the house boasts
different styles of skirting boards in differernt rooms. this, along
with the presence/absence of picture rail and corniceing, seems to be
all arranged to mark out the 'owner' and 'servants' domains of the
house. As soon as you get through the kitchen door, for example,
all the skirting is small, there is no picture rail and the doors
have no moundings.
Robert
Steve Walker
I think you've subjected the doors to a series of shocking environmental
changes, and each one would've caused some movement. Once they're
acclimatised to the final, indoor location you should have any further
problems.
To reduce splitting during that transition, you can pace it more slowly (eg
bring the doors in during the warmer months, or wrap them in polythene and
allow them to gradually adapt over a few weeks before unwrapping and hanging
them).
mark
"RobertL" <rober...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e1312135-8267-472b...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
mark
"RobertL" <rober...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e1312135-8267-472b...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
mark
"RobertL" <rober...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e1312135-8267-472b...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com...
As I understand it, it depends on what day of the week they are dunked. On a
Monday morning the tank may have cooled down quite a bit having been off
heat for the weekend. Hot dipping is better.
I did my doors with Danish oil, just wiped it on with a rag.
mark
Bernard Peek
>
> So the question is: has the dipping (in caustic soda I guess) made
> them more vulnerable to splitting? and is there anything we can do to
> reduce the risk, such as applying oil or something?
Yes the dipping or stripping will have made the wood more susceptible to
splitting. Paint and varnish has a protective effect, stopping water
from getting in to the wood. If you leave the bare wood open to the
elements it will absorb water and swell. When you bring the wood back
into the house the wood dries and shrinks again, but unevenly. You might
be able to prevent this by either oiling the wood immediately after
dipping/stripping or by drying the doors slowly.
Stuart Noble
One of the problems is that caustic penetrates deeply into old timber,
and no amount of rinsing/hosing gets rid of it all. The residue is
hygroscopic, with the result that parts of the wood may never dry out
completely. Grey streaks on panels are common, the darker bits usually
being sapwood.
Hydrogen peroxide will make them paler, but doesn't address the drying
out issue. Neutralising the caustic residue with vinegar achieves little
because the resulting salts are equally hygroscopic.
I think you have to accept the splits, and any other distortion, as a
feature. A couple of my doors are split, and banana shaped to boot. The
Victorians didn't allow for central heating.
Stuart Noble
Lukewarm dipping is best IME.
mark
"Stuart Noble" <stuart...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:aBNXm.17531$Ym4....@text.news.virginmedia.com...
What I found with the cooler dips is that the doors came back furry, that
is, the surface of the wood wasn't smooth. Maybe it was just those
particular doors
I guess it is difficult to determine which is the best temp. unless one is
present with a thermometer when the doors are dipped.
mark
Chris George
Dear Robert
I used sodium and potassium hydroxide to extract hemicelluoses (five
carbon sugars) from timber in doing my thesis. It was necessary to
make the timber into sawdust in order to do so as the material had
such limited penetration into the side grain of whole wood so I would
take with a pinch of salt (absent any scientific paper or evidence to
the contrary being supplied) assertions that caustic soda has deeply
penetrative powers. If that were the case we would not have used OS
to "treat" wood under pressure in plants. It all depends on the
porosity and permeability of the wood and I guess it is likely to be
in the order of magnitude of one or so mm.
What might make a timber split is moisture content - water getting in
Dependent on the time heat and duration of the dip that might well be
a considerable distance (steam was used to bend planks in ship
building)
That is you likely candidate for splitting
How to reduce risk?
limit dip time to that just for paint
use an organic stripper
do all the other sensible things mentioned by others such as not
having panels too fixed in grooves
above all keep out the water
Best wishes
Chris
Stuart Noble
of timber and sometimes what was on there in the first place. For some
reason the old spirit varnishes don't dissolve cleanly. I had my own
tank for years but never really discovered why.
The Natural Philosopher
> We had our Victorian internal doors "dipped" to remove the paint. The
> rest of the woodwork we stripped with a blow torch. The stripped
> doors stood in the garden shed for several months, but we have now
> brought a few of them in and rehung them. In many cases the wood
> panels split from shrinkage in the hot dry house.
>
> So the question is: has the dipping (in caustic soda I guess) made
> them more vulnerable to splitting?
No.
and is there anything we can do to
> reduce the risk, such as applying oil or something?
>
There is, but I forget the name.
But it doesn't help with a good finish. essentially it replaces the
water with a sort of wax impregnation.
My advice is to chuck 19th century chipboird AKA pine in the skip where
it belongs.
Let some other mug habve the pleasure of trying to make the cheapest of
all building materials in 1890, look like it isn't just cheap shit.
>
> thank you,
>
> Robert
The Medway Handyman
Indeed. Always makes me smile when they give that out as a top tip on DIY
shows.
--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
The Medway Handyman
> What I found with the cooler dips is that the doors came back furry,
> that is, the surface of the wood wasn't smooth. Maybe it was just
> those particular doors
Is that not caused by over zealous pressure washing when they rinse them?
Stuart Noble
> On 21 Dec, 13:50, RobertL <robertml...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> We had our Victorian internal doors "dipped" to remove the paint. The
>> rest of the woodwork we stripped with a blow torch. The stripped
>> doors stood in the garden shed for several months, but we have now
>> brought a few of them in and rehung them. In many cases the wood
>> panels split from shrinkage in the hot dry house.
>>
>> So the question is: has the dipping (in caustic soda I guess) made
>> them more vulnerable to splitting? and is there anything we can do to
>> reduce the risk, such as applying oil or something?
>>
>> thank you,
>>
>> Robert
>
> Dear Robert
> I used sodium and potassium hydroxide to extract hemicelluoses (five
> carbon sugars) from timber in doing my thesis. It was necessary to
> make the timber into sawdust in order to do so as the material had
> such limited penetration into the side grain of whole wood so I would
> take with a pinch of salt (absent any scientific paper or evidence to
> the contrary being supplied) assertions that caustic soda has deeply
> penetrative powers.
It certainly penetrates more than water, hence its use in getting water
stains to "bite".
geraldthehamster
> In article <e1312135-8267-472b-94f6-7bdfc4364...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
I'd be inclined to accept the splits as part of the character of the
doors. Alternatively you could prise off the mouldings around the
affected panel, on both sides, using a wide chisel, then see if you
can loosen one of the split sides of the panel in the groove in the
stile, and push back together. More drastic would be to prise off the
mouldings, remove panel and repair- this is fiddly as you have to
remove 3 edges of the panel to get it out - I've recently done this
with several Victorian doors where some panels had previously been
replaced with plywood, but fortunately I had other sacrificial doors
as panel donors.
Don't oil the doors unless you want to darken the colour - depending
on your wood you might get a rich golden glow, or a muddy brown. You
could experiment on a small bit of one door. If you like the colour
they are now, I'd just wax them (Fiddes furniture wax is good).
Yes, Victorian doors were made out of cheap wood and meant to be
painted. However, that wood is far better than the crap that B&Q sell
(whether or not made into doors) and after 100 years is nicely
seasoned. The panels often have an attractive grain pattern -
basically you're either a fan of stripped doors or you're not ;-)
Cheers
Richard
NT
wrote:
> RobertL wrote:
> > We had our Victorian internal doors "dipped" to remove the paint. The
> > rest of the woodwork we stripped with a blow torch. The stripped
> > doors stood in the garden shed for several months, but we have now
> > brought a few of them in and rehung them. In many cases the wood
> > panels split from shrinkage in the hot dry house.
> and is there anything we can do to
> reduce the risk, such as applying oil or something?
dry them out slowly instead of suddenly. Remove any paint jamming the
panels, if you can. So ideally wait till summer to bring them indoors,
assuming they're dry in the shed.
NT