Removal of oil from bare timber

I use the burning metho trick for oil as well . Have done for many years . It brings plenty of oil to the surface that needs to be quickly wiped off , within seconds , before it sinks away again. It never removes 100% of the oil though , not for deeply soaked pieces .
application of the metho before ignition is something you need to be careful with . I pour some on and spread it out with a rag . it needs to be controlled , to much of a pool and you burn the wood. I like repeated burns to draw the oil but not hot enough to scorch timber .
And yes, its really dangerous . Ive never had a problem with any of the burning with metho uses I use . Except the time I forgot that I had applied an oil stain half an hour before and the burning metho drew up and ignited the not yet dry oil stain . I had a cedar table top billowing thick black smoke in the work shop. Had to throw it out the wide roller door upside down onto concrete to put it out .

The other thing that went wrong with doing this was a young guy who worked with me and watched, went off to work at another Antique shop and thought he'd show the guys there what he had seen me do. He set himself on fire and they had to put him out and take him to the Alfred burns ward.

As well,
Its an old method used for repairing french polished surfaces with buried oil from the polishing process gone wrong .
The Lovely old french polisher who showed us young ones, was a polisher his whole long life . He started his polishing days at the age of around 14 in 1914 in Chapel st Prahran Melbourne. He worked with us through the 70s 80s and into the 90s . The old guys that taught him as a boy were grain filling cedar with fine plaster and wiping it off, then when dry, wiping it down with linseed oil the next day. It was one of his jobs as a boy to do the grain filling that way. You can see its effects today on red Cedar furniture built after the 1850s to 60s .
Buried oil under a polish job can show up later as crazing ,if its between hard layers of shellac , or as white blotches or marks , wide and patchy or in the grain pores of the timber.
nothing to do with the grain filling I mentioned above. although it could be a problem if the oil in that process was not given enough drying time.
Rob

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Originally Posted by eht

Hi David,

I have quite a few years in restoration of antiques and have many times had to remove oils from tables writing desks etc.
What I have done and a word of warning (can be dangerous) is to pour some meths onto the surface over the oil stain and leave it to evaporate, then add more and here is the danger part ignite the meths. your will find that the heat from the hot meths will bring the oil to the surface and leave a blackish bubbled surface which can be scraped off.
You may have to repeat it several times but make sure the surface has cooled down. It is quite spectacular to see the flames and then the bubbling oil.

Caution take the object outside - do not put too much meths onto surface- be careful lighting the meths.

I once poured to much onto a round table and after lighting to meths watched as the burning meths flowed over the edge of the table but did not reach the floor.

Sometimes it may help to make a mound around the oil stain with plasticine to keep the meths in the oils stain area.

I have used this method on french polished tables and it does not ruin the surface and only needs to patch the affected area.

You may start off putting white spirits ( Stoddard Solvent ) on the surface first which will not affect the french polish and will tend to dissolve some oils.
(White spirits is used as dry-cleaning fluid and it will not leave an oily residue when it evaporates. Kerosene and mineral turps both leave residues and take longer to evaporate. Also you can use it to remove build up of waxes).

Suggest to try this burning method on scrap timber first.

Good Luck

ET

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Yes, I have tried that process with great success, but on oil that had not penetrated to much depth. Also a method to remove slight dings. Do you think the lit metho method would work on deeply penetrated oil?