Except for the Latex stains maybe, strippers won't touch most stains much because they penetrate the wood. Oil based stains might lighten with enough applications of petroleum based solvents but never clear completely as the solvent will float some of the pigments and suspend some to settle further into the wood.
You could bleach the colour out with Chlorine bleach like Javex or, as you already know, remove the surface layers of wood with sanding to remove the pigmented wood cells. I think I would go for the bleach then restain or, if not a translucent stain just apply the colour you want over the old. Translucent stain will allow the old stain through, this too may be acceptable depending on what the optically enabled find pleasing. ----- Original Message ----- From: Ralph Supernaw To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 4:11 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Stripping stane Hi, My mom has some doors she would like to have stripped and refinished. We tried one door this weekend to see how things would go. What we found was that the paint came off pretty easily but the original stain that had been painted over didn't come off so easily. I basically had to sand off the surface of the door to get to wood that wasn't stained. That leaves me with a couple questions: 1. Is there a way to more easily remove the stain? Several of the doors she wants done are French doors and so would be very hard to sand without damaging the door. 2. We are refinishing with stain that is very close to the color of the original stone. How difficult would it be to simply restain over the old stone? Thanks for your help. Ralph [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.6.2/1609 - Release Date: 8/13/2008 6:43 AM [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
