Coming off of some success with my shift knob refinish, I decided to dive into the shift surround. It was pretty nasty with many cracks and lots of local discoloring.

I used the same process of heat gun and putty knife and had no issues. It required only modest heat to loosen the coating. I just let the putty knife slide along under it.

Some pieces came off in satisfyingly big chunks!

All told, it was less than an hour start to finish.

There is a lot of discoloring from every area the finish was cracked and at each edge surface . I need to figure out how to minimize that since sanding is less of an option this time. Suggestions welcomed!

Here is what a stain looks like close up. It's really dug in there.

 

If this turns out as good as the shift knob there will be some of us grabbing our heat guns.

 

On a table top I had some luck with bleach on a Q tip. That looks like it's going to be a major concern. Taking it off might bake it discolor, so you will have to stain the whole piece lightly. Going to be interesting, wish I was there to go through the process with you.
Not having a back up would scare the heck out of me.
Good luck.

 

This is great, glad it came off in with some big bits.

On the 'refinishing' task, I have noticed while messing with the cracks that the water based stain thinned with isopropyl tends to spread everything out, it's less of a balance between spreading and staining when you have access to the whole surface. As things spread, it's going to look more like burl, less like crack. You could try isopropyl itself in a tiny region too without stain to see if the 'life stain' discoloration will spread out.

Sanding is still a good option, I think, with some care. You could start with 1000 or 2000 and see if that fixed the 'issues'.

As a cautionary tale for hopefully an unlucky few, I present my test piece with relatively tenacious coating below. Even though there was extensive cracking, this took more than an hour with multiple passes, singed wood, very slow progress. Some small bits took quite a while to clear, and the results are awful. I eventually tried a rapid heating technique to try to get the intrinsic water at the interface to lift the coating off. That did not work especially well here either. The coating cracked, but did not easily come off.

Took more than an hour to get to this abysmal state, singed wood and very very slow progress.

 

Crbass: Had I seen your after picture first , I never would have started this!

 

I have mentioned this several times over the years but it may be worth repeating here....

Most metropolitan areas have one or more retired woodworkers clubs. These guys have decades of experience, access to every woodworking tool known to man, and a comprehensive understanding of how to refurbish very thin veneers. I know this because I found such a club way back in the early 1990s and they did a magnificent job of restoring some wood trim I had back then, and they also custom-built my wife's much-treasured teak jewelry box. They enjoyed doing those projects and refused to take any money from me, so I purchased multiple planks of oak, walnut, maple, and teak from a local lumber company and brought them to their shop when I picked up the new jewelry box. They were thrilled to get the planks and gave me the nickel tour of their very impressive shop....

Google "retired woodworkers clubs" along with your city name and see what turns up. This is definitely the way to go for very thin, very delicate pieces that will break if you happen to sneeze within 10 feet of them....

 

Mhminich, wow masterful job. I'm impressed, you have guts :-).

I wanted to chime in regarding the super fine sandpaper suggestion Dale made. Here's an idea, check into Micro Mesh brand sandpaper. I was surprised to recently find it's on amazon now too. The grits available include 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 12,000. FWIW the 12,000 grade feels like the texture of loose leaf paper to your fingers.

Sequentially using each of these will knock your socks off - the wood will pretty much get to a mirror shine.

Life is far easier and results much faster with a random orbital palm sander, but given the size of your surround, folding a piece around a sanding block should work just fine too. This will get you to an example with a block included:


hope it helps, keep us posted!
John

 

Sometimes the easiest solution is the most obvious. Soap and water! It occurred to me that the stains were likely from spilled drinks (no telling how that could happen) so I hit it with Dawn and a toothbrush. It cleaned up quite well. Notice in the pic that the veneer did crack in the same place as the finish. I attribute this to over tightening of the plates that secure the surround (not by me).


What is tricky is determining what is a stain versus what is burl. It is very subtle in raw wood.

 

You know, it's funny. I've seen wood in the junkyards I would never have picked up (and didn't) because the finish was undermined substantially. Now it seems like that was exactly the wood to be refinished as long as it still adhered to the aluminum or plywood, depending on location.

Live and learn.

 

You could try to use a mixture of toothpaste and baking soda. Mix 1 tablespoon (approximately 20ml) of non gel toothpaste with 2 tablespoons of baking soda (40ml) in a small bowl, creating a sticky white paste. Rub the paste into theburn mark in the direction of the wood grain. Let it stand for about 5 minutes and wipe off. This should take most of it off to the point where you can give it a light sanding. Make sure you get all the goop off before you refinish. This has worked for me on light burns and stains when I've refinished old furniture. I would grab a piece of maple veneer from your local wood shop, give it a light singe with the heat gun and test the mixture on that first. Good luck bud, let us know how it goes.

 

Great tip Ozbot. I'll give that a try!

 

That's a feature not a bug.

You may already know this, but wet the surface with ispropyl or mineral spirits (or water, but I might have done this last since I'd be worried about swelling and raising the grain). You'll see imperfections. If they look like burl, you win. If not, continue cleaning/sanding/whatever.

 

The answer to, "Do the cracks in the finish extend into the wood?" is yes, they do to some degree. I have three cracks, all emanating from where the cover mounting tabs screw down. Ham-fistedness when securing this cover is clearly an issue.

 

I'm not sure if this will work but you could put some carpenters glue into the crack with a tooth pick
and then lightly sand across the crack with some 240 grit while the glue is still tacky. The glue will fill
the gaps and hold the wood together and the fine sawdust will bind with the glue on top and make it
look like the wood beside it. You just have to be careful not to get glue on the veneer beside the crack
as the finish will look different beside it. This should stop the crack from getting bigger and hopefully
look okay under the finish. If you try this do it after you do your final cleaning. I've done this on furniture
and it works pretty good. Careful though because the veneer is thin and probably fairly brittle. This won't
work if you stain the wood.

 

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Since I'm looking for 'good' I'm willing to live with the age - related character marks in the wood. So I went ahead and sanded first with 320 and then 600. I had one tiny burn through where I aggressively tried to sand out a scratch, but it will hardly be noticeable.

After a good wipe down, the first coat! Wow! It really shows just how badly the old finish had yellowed.

This next part is going to take awhile as I coat and sand and coat, but the result is sure to be fantastic!

 

Looks nice, much better than originally
In my opinion you should give it more coats, the original layer is super thick. This way you can always sand it / polish it later if you scratch it instead of repeating the process again.

 

OK looks real good. I have got quotes in the past to refinishing my burlwood and they were retarded.
This looks doable to me.
Thanks... like I don't have enough projects already.
Now where is that heat gun?

 

I'm going to put a disclaimer out!
I remember reading once about a finish problem in the 2000/2001 models. Maybe a SB?
It is entirely possible that the ease of getting the finish off that I've observed is related to those particular years. As Crbass shared, his finish did not chip off so easily!

I'm hoping for continued success as I have my sights set on bigger fish. Go big!

 

My 2001 dash looks just like yours, so much that when I bought the car I asked around if this was actually elm. The elm shift knob looks great with it (below), and I'm keeping mine the way it is, acting as if it's 'faux elm'. Didn't find out until later that this is a common (universal?) issue in the 2001's. Will be interesting if this is the difference.

Just for completeness, someone yesterday suggested to me that dry ice was an 'easy' way to get the coating off xk8 dashes. Rub dry ice on coating, smack with the back side of a spoon, then coating shatters. Result for me...

...nothing. Maybe a crack more, once or twice, but certainly does not easily come off, even if i sit the giant piece of dry ice on the trim, wait until everything equilibrates (15 minutes or more). Still doesn't 'shatter like glass', acts more like bulletproof glass. Another hour on this technique with little to show for it. Your mileage may vary.

Again for completeness, my test pieces are from 1998s, my desired fix is on a 2002 (without the milky wood).


Faux elm.

 

I think I'm done with this piece. I could continue adding more coats but I'm not sure beyond film thickness what I'll get out of it. This for the record is 6 coats with sanding between.


It was a great learning experience and a rewarding result. A before picture for reference.

I'm now not afraid of the wood and will be going after the dash pieces next. I hope others take this on as well!