Expert Furniture Sanding in Toronto

When you want to revive your wooden furniture and make it look great again, sanding is often the important first step of the process. Sanding is done before finishing the wood in order to remove any small defects from the surface. These defects can affect the performance and the appearance of finishes if not sanded out right from the start. Lanciano Furniture provides the sanding services you need the most in order to begin refinishing your valuable furniture.

Sanding Out Defects for Antique Furniture Refinishing

If you require antique furniture refinishing, we likely will have to remove the existing finish before starting the sanding. Then we can start working on the defects. There are a number of defects that may be spotted on your antique wood furniture such as the following:

• Burns
• Cutter marks
• Indentations
• Raised grain
• Glue spots
• Scratches

When the effects only encompass a small area of the wood, sanding can often get rid of them completely. Larger defects, however, such as gouges, may need more work. Many types of discolouration marks will also require additional techniques to get rid of them entirely.

The Sanding Procedure

The first part of the sanding process involves making a plan for the sanding. The goal is to eliminate defects quickly while at the same time leaving the surface as smooth as possible so that tiny scratches aren’t visible once the finish has been applied to the wood. The process usually begins with coarse  80-100 grit sandpaper to remove the first layer of the defect. Higher grit sandpapers are then used in order to remove the scratches that were created while using the lower grit sandpapers.

An example of this would be using an 80 grit paper first followed by a 100 grit, 120 grit, 150 grit and then finally finishing up with a 180 grit sandpaper. The progression made through the different grits is subject to change as the wood is being sanded. Sanding specialists can usually gauge ahead of time what grade of sandpaper they will use based on the type of wood. In some cases, however, the procedure must be changed based on the wood’s reaction to the different papers being used.

Sanding Various Types of Wood

Oak is an example of a wood with a coarser grain and large pores and this type of wood tends to sand better than finer grain wood. The coarser grain and larger pores hide the sanding scratches a lot better than wood with a finer grain and smaller pores. Finer grained wood tends to show the sanding scratches more, so it takes an expert in the field to determine the right grain of sandpaper that would be best for the job. Quite often, a finer sandpaper such as 220 grit would be used for the final stage of sanding.

When selecting the best sandpaper for this final stage, it’s also important to consider the type of finish that will be applied to the wood. In the case of antique furniture refinishing (that is, using a finish that is oil-based), it’s best to use sandpaper with a higher grit such as 400 to avoid highlighting any scratches that were made by sanding. If the antique furniture piece is going to be stained, however, the colour of the wood can be affected by the sanding paper that is used. In this scenario, the wood should not be sanded to an extremely smooth finish.

Sanding for Water-Based Finishes

Sanding creates microscopic ridges and valleys and wood cell slivers that are attached to the wood. These slivers and sanding ridges spring up and swell when a water-based finish is applied. This makes the surface appear fuzzy and rough and it is commonly referred to as grain raising. In order to eliminate this appearance, water can be applied and then left to dry. Then, the wood should be sanded in order to remove this raised grain.

Removing Dents and Other Large Defects

Some of the larger defects found on wood include gouges, smears, dents and splits. All of these problems must be removed before the wood finishing begins, otherwise the finish will look rough. These larger defects are often harder to eliminate from the surface of wood than smaller scratches.

Dents can usually be removed by putting a few drops of distilled water on the dent and allowing it to soak in. A clean cloth should then be placed right on the tip of an iron that has been heated. This is placed over the dent while being careful to make sure that the wood doesn’t burn. When the heat is transferred to the wood from the iron, the original wood fibers that became compressed will start to decompress and recover the dimensions they originally had. This may take more than one cycle of wetting and heating. Once the dent has been treated and left to dry, the wood can be sanded.

Wood Finishing Toronto

Lanciano Furniture is a wood finishing Toronto company that employs highly-skilled craftspeople for furniture restoration, refinishing, painting and much more. We can handle all of your refinishing needs.

We offer professional sanding services to customers that want to revitalize their older furniture. Our company has been operating for more than 40 years and this has provided us with the experience necessary to properly sand any type of wood. We understand that you want your wooden pieces revitalized and brought back to life and this is what we deliver.

When you bring your furniture to us for sanding, our wood finishing Toronto experts will take extreme care during the entire sanding and finishing process. If you’re looking for experienced craftspeople to take care of your furniture projects, we are the professionals to call first. Visit our site at lancianofurniture.ca for more information about our company and our services and feel free to fill out the contact form on the website to request a free quote.