sticky wood. -actually an old table.

[Tom C]

I got an old dining room set from a relative -not an antique. As long as I could remember the top always had a stickiness to it. It almost feels like uncured varnish. I could run my fingernail across it and leave a mark. Any ideas on what this could be and if I have get rid on it> I tried a little rubbing alcohol on a small spot. While it lifted some dirt, the stickiness remains.

[Life Is Good]

It could be Syrup. Are you going to use it for building or keep it as a table set? You could sand it down.

[sunburst]

It's probably and old oil varnish that never really cured hard, or maybe even raw linseed oil or some such. It could also be a thick build-up of some sort of spray-on junk that got marketed as furniture polish. I doubt that anything will really fix it, short of stripping and refinishing.

[Tom C]

I want to keep it as dinning room table. It's actually pretty nice. I may have to resort to the refinishing but I have a few rooms to paint and with this 95 degree, 90% humidity we've been having in NY gives me a good reason to procrastinate longer :)
Thanks

[Geoff B]

I think old shellac will do that if it's past it's expiration date... I could be wrong though...
I had that once on a table in a house I was renting. If you just touched it, it felt fine, but if you rest your arm on it for more than 3 seconds, it kind of peels off. I just wiped it down with steel wool, then put 2 coats of polyurethane on it. Stickyness gone. (refinishing may have been a better idea for the long run, but it was antiquey and had a cool aged look, so I didn't want to mess with it. I was also only there a year...)

[roscoestring]

I remember all of my grandparents furniture being sticky. Chest of drawers, Victrola, mirror frames, chairs, tables, etc. After she passed away we inherited some of the furniture and fournd nothting that would effectively take the stickyness away without removing the finish. The best thing that we tried was lacquer thinner which took it down to the wood. Then we just refinished it. Also when it had the sticky finish on it, it was nearly black in color. After we took the sticky off it had beautiful, natural looking, light colored wood underneath.

[JEStanek]

Could it be a build up of old paste wax?

Jamie (who has no idea what he's talking about)

[bmac]

I would suspect that raw linseed oil was used on it by mistake or the refinisher or owner just didn''t know any better.

I inherited a nice antique walnut dining room table which was polished commercially using linseed oil. It took roughly 30 years to dry and until that time it had the sticky quality you describe... Very very irritating. And of course the sticky finish attracted and held dirt.

For linseed oit to be successfully on furniture it must contain a little dryer.

[rockies]

I'm have run into similar situations, and I'm thinking like Jamie ... wax buildup from years of wax polishing. Try naptha and it may take a few applications using a naptha dampened piece of rough towelling or burlap to remove it. try a small area on an edge in an out of the way place first. Did a table (maple) a few years ago and it took a lot of elbow grease to get this 50 or 60 year old table dewaxed but it turned out beautiful once it was cleaned up.
Dave