Help! Grain Stained Timber! - Can I Fix

[DrewCarey82]

G'day Guys.

Very lazily on the weekend I left the bag with my spent grain on my timber bar over night, unfortunately there was a tiny leak and besides the stench of garbage water its left a white stain on the bar not overly noticeable but bad enough.

The surface feels the same as the rest of the bar, but the area its self is more pale.

Needless to say the missus is furious with me and my very brewing future could be in jepardy.

I am so angry at myself considering I normally clean up spotlessly and right away....

I can cover it with a bar runner but cant imagine the landlord will be too impressed.

Any advice would be appreciated? Can I by some sort of spray or ......

Cheers.

 

[MVZOOM]

Try heating it gently, ie.. what's happened is the liquid is sitting under the surface. Heat it gently, for a period of time and you should find it'll dissapear.

Ceers -Mike

 

[razz]

It's an educated guess that the stain will be from the low ph of the grain, I know you will say the ph rises with spargeing, but it may have been low enough to cause the reaction with the timber. :blink:

 

[DrewCarey82]

How would I heat it.

Hot water bottle(please dont laugh I have no idea about carpentry.)

 

[Gerard_M]

Damp cloth such as a face washer with a steam iron on top.

 

[DrewCarey82]

Cheers mate.

 

[pint of lager]

This is where google shines.

Try putting in "wood water stain" and have a browse through the sites it throws up. They include this link and thousands of other hits. Included is Gerard's suggestion and some others.

Good luck with it.

 

[crozdog]

DC,

This is a pretty common problem for furniture restorers & home owners - particularly with French Polished items.

you may find that over time it disappears without doing anything. As to heating it, try a hair dryer.

I have also heard that french polishers swear by the following method (I haven't tried it myself):
1. dry area,
2. place a few drops of metho on the area
3. light metho. h34r:
4. don't let flame spread to rest of house!!

Seriously, placing a small amount of metho on the stain without lighting it may work as the alcohol has a drying effect (this is similar to the nail polish remover trick in the link from pol). I always used to pour a bottle of metho in the petrol tank whenever I picked up a batch of fuel which had water in it.

An alternate method from here
Water stains fall into two categories: white rings and black marks. Both are caused by water. When it's trapped in the finish, it's a white ring. When it gets a chance to penetrate into the wood, you have a black mark. The white rings aren't so hard to take care of. Use a pad of very fine steel wool and drench it with lemon oil. The lemon oil won't remove the stain, but it lubricates the steel wool so that it doesn't scratch the wood. Very gently buff out the white ring with the fine steel wool.

Hope you get it out so you can start brewing again!

Beers

Crozdog

 

[DrewCarey82]

It was a very, very cold atmosphere around the Carey house last night and until that stains gone I certainly wont so much as mention brew.....

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

[Beerpig]

Keep the stain, lose the missus .................... you know it makes sense!

Just jokes OK

Cheers

 

[Lukes]

It was a very, very cold atmosphere around the Carey house last night and until that stains gone I certainly wont so much as mention brew.....

Thanks for all the help guys.

The brew house = The dog house

 

[spog]

better get used to living in a cold house,you wont get that stain out,short of stripping the finish off,sanding and refinishing.applying heat will only open the grain and set the stain even more.might i suggest 2 trucks,one full of chocies the other full of roses.nah bugga that it would be a waste of time!