Vintage Products

Re: Restoring rosewood

scuba — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:26:43 GMT

Hi,thank you for the answeres,i have now tryed to sand it down and the marks almoust wanished,but they reapered a litle faded when i polished it with teak oil,i think as sugested that the marks are from the plastic of the covers,and they go to deep to be sanded away without damaging the rosewood layer, but maybe wax will darken the wood a little so the marks fade even more.

Jon

Re: Restoring rosewood

Islippy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:11:45 GMT

Hiya

I'm a novice at this but will pass on what has worked for me on a pair of rosewood speakers and various other teak pieces. None have been that badly damaged but all have had some surface imperfections, marks, scratches and general fading/dry wood. After cleaning off any actual dirt, I've had some great results from only applying some butchers block wax from John Lewis. I know it's a bit random, but I had some in the cupboard and thought I'd give it a try before using the slightly messier teak oil. It's basically just decent quality natural wax - I leave it for 24 hours before buffing it off and it gets rid of a lot of the marks, whilst making others much less noticeable. All I can say is that everything I've used it on has looked a lot better afterwards - I can't say whether they would look even better after some of the more adventurous methods described elsewhere, but they're good enough for me! It also smells of oranges which isn't the worst thing in the world...and goes nicely with the "vintage B&O smell" observed elsewhere in this forum!

I know you didn't ask about this but I'll mention it for reference as I'd guess other folk have had problems with water rings from drinks glasses marking their equipment. DISCLAIMER - THIS WORKED FOR ME WITH A NEW RING MARK ON A TEAK AMPLIFIER, IT MAY NOT WORK FOR YOU AND MAY DAMAGE YOUR EQUIPMENT - DISCLAIMER OVER! A warm, dry iron (no steam) and a dry tea towel - put the tea towel over the ring and run the iron lightly over the top a few times. Apparently ring marks are caused by moisture being retained in the wood, so by dry heating it with the iron the moisture is released and captured by the tea towel. This may not be true, but all I can say is that it worked miraculously for me on a fresh ring mark that wouldn't polish out.

All the best and good luck with your project.

Cheers

Re: Restoring rosewood

tournedos — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:27:16 GMT

I don't think I have a single piece of kit with (real) rosewood finish, but on teak, I have had great results with sanding it first down with fine wet sanding paper (without water, obviously) and then applying teak oil. It will look very dull after the sanding, but the oil brings it back to life! You can try fine wire wool as well, but in that case you probably have to get the electrical parts out because you will have steel wire pieces all over the place. They might cause electrical shorts and your tape mechanism certainly won't like them.

You might also try cleaning the surfaces with white spirit first, could be that something has evaporated from the plastic in the cassette cases and darkened those areas in addition to the sunlight fade around them.

In any case, you will have to get a little bit of the veneer off to get rid of the unevenly coloured surface layer. Small scratches and dents will disappear at the same time. Use a sanding block, and be careful not to sand through the veneer - it got thinner and thinner with the years, but I guess a BC1400 will still have enough real wood for this to be feasible. And careful around the edges so you don't rip the opposing veneer off.

I don't think I need to advice you to keep the abrasives well away from all the aluminum parts!

Restoring rosewood

scuba — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:05:00 GMT

Hi, i found a Beocenter 1400 in a secondhand store today,it works perfectly but it seems that it has has been on display in the store window for some time whit some music casettes laying on top of it, beacause the rosewood panel is mutch darker on the spots where the casettes have sheltered it from the sun, i have tried to polish it whit teak oil whit no luck,are there other metods to restore rosewood?

Jon