Some of my wood trim has cracked and faded. Although I can't do much about the veneer fade I was contemplating wet sanding the clear coat to flatten it out then give it a few coats of clear to bring it back. Has anyone done this with this specific trim? I have the x305 xj12 which has a gold pinstripe around the panel (presumably in the clear coat) so I need to be careful not to go too deep. Anyone know if any clear coats react to the oem coating and shouldn't be used?

 

The discoloration / fogging probably goes through all coats

There are services that handle these and may have the underlay pinstripe

You can experiment with one from a salvage yard for a aft door trim but that would require tooling up

To get all the lacquer off a heat gun supposedly works and there may be Youtube videos on the matter , the actual wood laminate is very thin and can be sanded through so again a salvage yard sample to experiment with like one with the curved corners as this would be most challenging

 

I am led to believe by the JLRCP site that the stripes are inlaid boxwood.

 

Yes, the inlay is a piece of boxwood. I toured the factory when those cars were current and it's a lovely mix of ultra modern and traditional skills. The grooves are cut in a computer controlled router, then the boxwood strip is inlaid by hand and glued in place. Once the glue is dry, it's finished by hand with a cabinet scraper. Then it is clearcoated and buffed by hand.

The finish is polyester ( not polyurethane like most box store wood finishes) and it has probably cracked due to the differential expansion between the finish and the aluminum or wood substrate. The substrate depends on which panel it is. To do the job properly, you need to remove all the old finish to bare wood and start over. Otherwise the cracks and discolouration will simply show through the new finish.

If you used an automotive grade clearcoat you should be fine. Be aware that the wood veneer is extremely thin. Unless you are sanding by hand with extraordinary care, you will sand through it. Note that all of the wood in the car will have come from a single tree and is bookmatched in each panel, so if you sand through you'll never get another piece to match either grain or colour.

Unless you're very experienced in refinishing veneers, I would leave this to a professional. Talk to Saul Chaplin at Britishautowood, he knows his way around Jaguar wood refinishing. I've done cabinetmaking for 30 years and it's not a job I'd touch again because I know the chance of me failing is so high. I have tried previously and even with 2000 grit sandpaper I went through the veneer in the blink of an eye.

 

+1

Not surprisingly, this question comes up quite regularly as hot, sunny climates are hard on interiors. Crazing on the veneer clearcoat is tempting to DIY. I can fix a scratch in the paint so I can fix clearcoat on the veneer - WRONG. We've had reports of great success ........ from members who have worked with veneers professionally or have been hobbyists for years. We've also had a reports of disasters from DIY'ers who didn't find out until too late just how thin the clearcoat and the the veneer itself is.

I do most work on my vehicles myself but there's two things I leave to professionals - transmission rebuilds and trim refurbishment. The skillset they bring to these tasks and the results are always worth the cost.

Graham

 

I'm not a fan of chemical stripping and what it possibly does to the veneer , but that's me

Notice how his rattle can finish does not appear to flow out and be smooth on application

He used a Minwax- Polyurethane Helmsman Spar Clear Gloss


and

 

Thanks all, I got a panel from the wrecking yard I am torturing and experimenting with

 

An update on what didn't work and what did.
I'd coarse sanded the finish to encourage bite, then tried various off the shelf strippers Citristrip, et al, wrapping in plastic (i'm in California so all the strong chemicals have been removed, and these products typically just create a giant sticky mess). Wasn't optimistic. No effect whatsoever.

Pure Methylene Chloride. No effect surprisingly.
Acetone. Nope

What did work as i ran out of options was a heat gun at temperatures much higher than I thought would be feasible.

If you put a heat gun at full blast concentrated on one area after about 15 seconds the finish will start to blister up. The minute you remove the heat it goes down again so the trick is to pierce the blister(s) with a scalpel or similar while it is hot and lifted away from the veneer below. Next I used the pick seen in the picture to hook into the hole created by the scalpel, keeping it sideways/ parallel to the wood below but not touching it and pulling up.

The clear coat breaks off in various sized pieces even after the old finish is cooling. You may scorch the exposed veneer, this can be v gently sanded out with 1500 grit paper, but better to shield the exposed veneer areas from the heat source with some white card held above it.

I've got some heat gun nozzle attachments that help direct the heat, these may help localize also.

I'm stripping Vanden Plas door trim identical to the trim on my xj12, will post pictures once stripped and then when re coated (I'll use the same clear as I used when painting the car)

 

I saw the heat gun approach for spar paint some time back , not on a Jaguar or car example

But your pick makes the music jam

Someone did recently come up with as whole car autobody clearcoat as Yacht something and not cheap

 

Here's the two stripped door panels and a chunk of the semi opaque clear coat I chipped off.
Those vertical stripes on the wood grain are where either methylene chloride or acetone trickled through the uv damaged cracks in the clearcoat, they should sand off (I hope).
Some areas come off easily, others really put up a fight, I also used a fresh stanley knife blade horizontally in some areas. Fairly fumey job, ventilation would be good.

 

I cleared the two stripped test mules a while back. The one on the right above I sanded back with 1000 and went right back to the wood in some areas, one on the left above I left without wet sanding, it was bumpy but not much orange peel. Just cleared them both again today. Def seems to be better to wet sand before more clear. I'll probably wet sand again then flow coat them (added reducer so it goes more glossy) for a final coating.
They need quite a bit of clear on them to get a good finish (and i suspect to protect the wood from UV)

 

The originals were many coats somewhere I saw so to flow them ( thin ) may affect previous coats

Polyurethane approach ? although not Jaguar original

 

It's the low VOC urethane clear I used for repainting the car. The veneer was stripped back to bare wood.

 

Quick update on refinishing. I decided to to redo the ashtray and ski slope as the door strips made them look really bad.

Same heat and pick off technique as I mentioned earlier in thread with the caveat that anywhere that wasn't uv damaged - the area above the climate control on the ski slope and anywhere that was shielded by plastic parts were both much darker and also much harder to get the old clear coat off.

Some of the areas that will be covered up you have to leave to deal with later.

I cleared the various pieces 3 times after getting all the old yellow coating off, sanding off each time to smooth out orange peel and crevices.




Once it had the coats of clear on it I dry sanded the bumpy edge you see in the picture above with dry 320g, went through some finer grits then cleared again




This eliminated the ragged edge and smoothed everything out. It's quite a bit of work but makes a huge difference.