It’s been winter for a while now, and temperatures and humidity are dropping in most areas. This is not friendly to solid wood furniture. Wood is a porous material that readily absorbs and releases water, expands and contracts, and this change in wood size is often called shrinkage deformation. Deformation will produce a huge stress in the wood interior, furniture binding part, this stress will cause the wood itself and the binding part of the cracking, cracking and warping, reduce the strength of the binding part.
Wood surface treatment can delay the changes caused by moisture differences, thereby reducing stress and making the wood more stable. This is also one of the important reasons that solid wood furniture needs to do surface treatment. The surface treatment delays the water exchange process, regardless of the ambient temperature and humidity. Especially wood wax oil treatment of solid wood furniture. Usually do not pay attention to use, do not maintain, the longer the time, the higher the probability of furniture problems.
Why should the solid wood furniture treated with wood wax oil pay attention to the use and regular maintenance? The most important reason is that the protection of wood wax oil is general, and the coating is easily degraded.
Let’s start with protection. Common surface treatment products, protective ranking is: varnish > water paint ≈ nitro paint > wood wax oil > vegetable oil ≈ wax. The protection of wood wax oil is only better than that of vegetable oil and wax. In fact, it is understandable that wood wax oil itself is a mixture of various vegetable oils and wax. Its coating lacks strong protection against water, water vapor, solvents, high temperature and wear, and it is easy to destroy the coating. We should also pay attention to this point when using wood wax oil solid wood furniture.
And coating degradation. Degradation is mainly caused by the following three factors:
- Bright light. Light, especially sunlight, is the most damaging natural factor to the surface coating.
- Oxidation. Oxygen can combine with almost all components, causing them to oxidize.
- Physical damage. This includes wear and tear, as well as damage caused by contact between furniture and heat, water and other liquids.
Any coating, including very protective polyurethane paint, is also subject to degradation, but polyurethane coatings last longer than wood wax coatings. We cannot change the protective properties of wood wax coatings, but we can prevent coating degradation. It can be divided into two methods: passive protection and active maintenance. Passive protection is the main, active maintenance is auxiliary.
Passive protection
The best way to protect your furniture finish coat is to keep it in a constant state of coverage, away from destructive elements. Several methods are described below.
- In order to protect furniture from strong light exposure, try to avoid putting furniture in the sun directly, you can make full use of curtains, shading curtains, furniture is not used for a long time when covered with cloth protection.
- To slow the oxidation process, avoid placing furniture away from air conditioning, heating or other hot places. High temperatures increase the rate of oxidation. High temperatures also reduce the moisture content of furniture, increasing the chance of cracking and deformation.
- To minimize physical damage, use insulation MATS, coasters, placemats, and tablecloths. It is not recommended to use plastic or glass, which can make the surface of the furniture airtight, resulting in inconsistent moisture on both sides of the wood and increasing the chance of deformation. In addition, plastic film and furniture coating easily stick together.
Active maintenance
Active maintenance refers to regularly rubbing maintenance products on the surface coating. Maintenance products such as wood wax oil, wax, oil can increase the protection of coating, add luster to furniture, while covering up some subtle damage; Like liquid polishes, they dust, clean and polish a room. There are a wide variety of furniture maintenance products on the market, such as essential oil, beeswax, walnut oil, etc., and various product introductions. I have summarized these furniture maintenance products and divided them into four categories, which are wood wax oil, paste wax, oil and liquid polish.
Wood wax oil
If it is wood wood wax furniture I first push with wood wax furniture maintenance, it is the best protection of these four types of maintenance products. Wood wax oil is composed of natural vegetable oil, wax, desiccant, hydrophobic agent and oily solvent. Many people think wood wax oil is pure natural, in fact, it is not, natural vegetable oil drying is very slow, need to add desiccant to speed up the volatilizing rate. Overall, wood wax oil is an environmentally friendly and easy to handle surface treatment product.
Paste wax
Wax is a very popular surface treatment product. Wax is less protective, so it is rarely used as a surface treatment product on furniture. But as a maintenance product, wax is a very good choice. It can be used on any coated surface and is easy to operate to create a satin finish. And the wax layer has a certain wear resistance, will not volatilize, as long as the wax layer is not worn off, it can provide continuous protection. Moreover, the thick layer of wax often applied to the end face of the wood can be very good to prevent water vapor through, which is very key for solid wood furniture.
Oil
Oil is a natural substance, usually derived from plant seeds and petroleum. Like linseed oil and tung oil, they absorb oxygen from the air and solidify, changing from a liquid to a soft solid. Only oil that can cure can be used as a surface treatment product. Other oils, such as olive oil and motor oil, cannot be used as surface treatment products because they cannot be cured. Because oil can penetrate wood, oil care products are often marketed as protecting wood from the inside, such as “deep nourishing and preventing cracking.” This is not the case. Most furniture to be maintained has a lacquer or wax coating on it itself, so oil cannot or cannot penetrate, so vegetable oil is better for wood that has not been treated with any coating.
Liquid polish
Liquid polishes should be the largest and most mainstream line in the furniture and floor care product market. You may be confused about this term, but if you change it to essential oil, lemon oil, orange oil, treatment oil, cleaning agent, spray wax, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Liquid polish has the advantages of dust-proof, cleaning, glazing and improving indoor odor, and protection and durability are very general. Businesses always transition propaganda liquid polish in the “waterproof, moisture-proof, deep nourishment, prevention of cracking” characteristics, although the results are unreliable, but this marketing success misled a lot of consumers.
Finally, the summary. First, it is highly recommended that you create an environment suitable for solid wood furniture by following the passive protection recommendations mentioned earlier. These methods provide the best long-term protection for the surface coating. Secondly, choose a maintenance product, regular maintenance furniture. The operation of active maintenance products is not complicated. The use of wood wax, paste wax, oil or liquid polish will not damage the original coating and wood under normal circumstances, so I hope you do more attempts.
