04-10-2023, 07:38 PM
You guys inspired me to give the cabinet an inital go. I'm only part way through cleaning and it took a bit of work to get this far. I started by trying to get the silver paint off the area around the center knob hole along with a few other splatters. It looks to me like silver model paint but who really knows.
I used a technique I learned by watching Baumgartner Restoration videos for fine art restoration. He sometimes uses a scalpel to scrape off paint splatters. Its a very delicate scraping and picking to get the unwanted paint to flake off and is very slow going but in this case it did a decent job. Then I wanted to see if I could get the dirt and grime off the decorative sections. I started with 1) cotton swabs moistened with plain water, then 2) water with a little Dawn in it, followed by 3) straight Dawn with swab rubbing. I did get some dirt but much less than I was expecting. I gave some 4 zero steel wool a try with gentle rotation and that started to get things a little better but wasn't really doing much of a job. I finally moved to using some Brasso on a cotton swab and working in around the decorative section. This finally started to make some progress and what you see below is where I quit for the day. Here are the "before and "so far" pics:
[Image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rpmikemhihm32a....jpg?raw=1]
[Image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/44icvm5iq3f03x....jpg?raw=1]
I used a technique I learned by watching Baumgartner Restoration videos for fine art restoration. He sometimes uses a scalpel to scrape off paint splatters. Its a very delicate scraping and picking to get the unwanted paint to flake off and is very slow going but in this case it did a decent job. Then I wanted to see if I could get the dirt and grime off the decorative sections. I started with 1) cotton swabs moistened with plain water, then 2) water with a little Dawn in it, followed by 3) straight Dawn with swab rubbing. I did get some dirt but much less than I was expecting. I gave some 4 zero steel wool a try with gentle rotation and that started to get things a little better but wasn't really doing much of a job. I finally moved to using some Brasso on a cotton swab and working in around the decorative section. This finally started to make some progress and what you see below is where I quit for the day. Here are the "before and "so far" pics:
[Image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rpmikemhihm32a....jpg?raw=1]
[Image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/44icvm5iq3f03x....jpg?raw=1]
