Refinishing furniture

[sparer]

We've got quite a lot of furniture bought a few years ago from Oak Furniture Land. Most of it is still in good nick but the pieces that were in the kids rooms have aged badly due to them not using coasters for drinks etc. There are no rings but the finish has started to 'peel' revealing the wood underneath. The wood underneath is not stained with a dye yet the finish is a different colour than the wood. If I scrape more of the finish off I can see the colour in the scraped off finish.

I'd like to refinish the furniture to bring it back to 'as new' condition but I'm unsure what type of product they used to originally finish the furniture although I can tell that it was sprayed on.

I've attached a photo. Any advice on what product to buy (varnish, lacquer etc.) and how to go about this would be appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

They have almost certainly used a 2-pack catalysed lacquer, which is almost universal in the furniture manufacturing trades. The difficulty with that is that it requires a spray gun in a spray booth and a good quality mask (ideally air fed) to use it as it is toxic to the sprayer (it catalyses very quickly in air and the toxic products are converted to non-harmful ones withing seconds of contact with the air). Nearest you can get to that would probably be a 1-pack pre-catalysed lacquer, some of which can be roller or brush applied. Because of potential finish incompatibility between the OEM finish and whatever you use I'd recommend that once you've scraped/sanded the original finish off you wipe the entire piece over with a cloth dampened in white spirits (to remove any dust, etc) then seal the surfaces with a cot or two of white (dewaxed) French polish. That will give you an intermediate layer which will prevent any reaction between residual (old) finish and new finish. Oak being an open-pore timber will pretty much always retain an amount of the finish in the pores which is why this step is advisable