How to remove heat stain from wood table?

Sources

How do I remove these heat stains from my table? A hot plate was ...

www.reddit.com

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Remove a heat stain from your table in SECONDS!!! - YouTube

www.youtube.com

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Testing 7 EASY Ways To Get A Heat Stain Out Of Wood! Clean With ...

www.youtube.com

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Removing Stains and Discoloration From Wooden Furniture: Tips

home.howstuffworks.com

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Answer

Video Full Text

• 00:00 Hi guys I am back with another video and today we're going to be talking about seven different ways to get a heat stain out of wood. So here's a quick look at my dining room table. I do a lot of projects on this table. So I had it already has tons of scratches so I'm about to do something crazy to it. Just so I can show you the different ways that people always say work to get a heat stain or a heat Mark out of wood. About six years ago I put a pizza box down on this table and I made a little short video showing how I removed that heat stain. So I thought I'm going to put a bunch of pizza boxes on this table again make some new heat stains and test the different ways that people suggest also work. But I left those hot pizza boxes sitting there for about 20 minutes and nothing happened so I guess. These boxes are thicker or the pieces just not as hot. So I had to come up with another way to make the heat marks on my table. So I got some hot wet rags and put them straight onto the wood and I made four huge heat marks or heat stains or white heat. Haze whatever you want to call it. I made four of them on my table just for you guys so that we could go over some of those popular fixes and talk about why why they might work for some people and why not for other people. I started by sectioning off one of those heat stains with painters tape so that I could try a few different things on that one heat stain. There. I started by applying normal petroleum jelly or Vaseline onto one section of that heat stain so you want to apply that nice and thick and across the entire heat stain and for this one we're going to leave it for three hours.

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• 01:37 Some people even recommend leaving it overnight but I want to see what happens after three hours. For this one for the next section. I am mixing up some normal baking soda with just a little bit of water so that it can be like pasty like a paste like mixture of baking soda. So maybe there's a teaspoon of water in that quarter cup. I'm gonna say of baking soda and just mix it up so it's nice and thick and pasty. Once I had that all mixed up. I applied that to another section of that heat stain so again you want it nice and thick you don't want to be able to see through that baking soda you want. I guess an eighth of an inch at least thickness of baking soda applied to the heat stain. Now I want to say that petroleum jelly or Vaseline is probably safe for most finishes that you would find on wood unless. It's something that just has like a teak with an oil protecting it or something. I wouldn't apply it to Teak maybe but most of these you should probably test on your finish. So this table is newer. I think it's probably varnish that's been applied to this. But if you have an antique or an older table with an older style finish a finish that feels gummy or if you put your fingernail in it. It is soft or some other types of non-water-based finishes. You should probably test all of the things I'm going to show you here in. Shorter time spans than I'm doing it so I'm leaving this baking soda for three hours just like the Vaseline but again if you don't know what the Finish is on your table. If you are worried about your finish. I would test the baking soda for just 10 or 15 minutes to see how your finish reacts and I also want to be very very clear that with heat stains anything that you do to try to remove the heat. Stain is another risk that you're taking that it might actually make the Finish worse and I want you guys to be aware of that. So if you are about to strip your table thinking that you have to strip it and refinish it anyway and you want to take a chance and see if there is really a five minute. Fix then do it but just know that there is also a chance that with certain types of finishes on tables or whatever Furniture it is you might also make it worse for older softer finishes so just be aware you still might have to strip and refinish your table. These techniques are just a last-ditch chance to avoid stripping but don't be scared this first one I'm going to show you here using a hair dryer. This is actually the easiest way to get a get rid of a heat stain in my opinion and it works really well on most finishes and it's probably safe unless again. You've got one of those soft gummy finishes already so.

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• 04:18 I'm using this hair dryer on high heat and of course it's really close to the top of that table. You can you can test it out by starting about a few inches above. It and just make sure that your finish isn't softening up or becoming gummy but the feel and texture of my finish did not change at all. So this is a 10 year old store-bought piece of furniture again. I think it's varnish that's applied to it so most store-bought Furniture. That's newer is going to have a similar finish make sure that you keep it moving just like when you're blow drying your hair just to avoid the heat building up too much in one spot. I sped this up for the video but I was able to get this this huge heat stain removed completely in about 10 minutes so a blow dryer is my favorite way to remove a heat stain from a wood table. It's really simple to use. Most people already have a blow dryer at home and it's not very risky for most table finishes so as you can see that worked really well on that heat stain. Let's move on to the next Super popular way people recommend to remove heat stains on tables and that's with just a normal clothes iron. So again. This is something that most people already have in their home or you can buy it at Target or somewhere for probably 10 15 so whenever I see people asking how to get rid of heat stains in Facebook groups.

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• 05:33 Particularly there is always it seems to be a debate between whether or not you used an iron with steam or an iron with just normal heat no Steam. When I fixed my table six years ago. I used steam but I today I decided I was going to try it with no steam first on this heat. Mark to see if it works. So I have the iron set to the cotton setting which is pretty hot and I let it heat up for five minutes before I started working with it. So you want to keep that iron moving the whole time just like you do with normal ironing. You don't want the heat to build up too much in one spot on your wood furniture and you also want to have a tea towel between the iron and the wood so a tea towel is not. It isn't very textured. A normal hand towel that you would find in your house or a bath towel is going to have a lot of a textured nap to it. You use a tea towel or a t-shirt folded up so that it has very little texture to the fabric. But it's also going to protect the furniture from from the iron so fold that t-shirt or that tea towel over once or twice to make it make it thick enough to protect the table and also if you'll notice what I'm doing here I am lifting up that iron every 15 or 20 seconds just to also make sure that the heat's not building up too much.

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• 06:53 It releases any steam that it might be pulling out of that heat stain and it's just good to keep checking when you're using this method with the iron. It's good to keep checking and making sure that your finish isn't becoming soft and gummy again. That's not happening with my varnish tabletop. But I know it's happened to other people with older finishes or a different type of finish on their table so you want to be careful. So I tried this method with a dry hot iron for five minutes five solid minutes and it did not make any change to the Heat stand on my table and I know I see all the time people recommend using no steam. So I don't know if those people actually had never tried it and just thought that that would be the way to do it or if it does work for certain types of finishes. I'm not sure so just be aware if the steam method that I'm going to show you next doesn't work for you maybe a dry. Iron does work on certain types of finishes but it just wasn't working for me at all. So I moved on using the steam iron to remove a heat. Mark or white heat haze off of a wood table so when I went to start using the steam setting on my iron. I still had it set at cotton. But I realized that my iron seemed to be broken so my steam button wasn't working. So I tried just applying water to the stain to see how that would work first so sort of simulating a steam iron but just by putting a little bit of water onto the stain itself and I think that was a mistake so applying the water directly to the heat. Stain itself actually is a little bit too. Risky I think if you do it in short quick burst of ironing it removes the stain but if you do it a little bit just a little bit too long with that iron on the heat. Even like 15 seconds I actually think it makes the heat Mark heat Mark worse so I figured out that if you don't have a steam iron the water should be on the other side of the towel. So the water should be on the iron side of the towel and the side of the towel. That's mostly dry should be on the wood surface itself. As you can see on this stain. I was able to get rid of most of that stain with the water on the table side um. But it feel it felt a little bit too risky and I can see how people say that they make their stain worse doing it the wrong way. So I just want to say I think the water really should be on the iron side.

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• 09:21 The moisture on the iron side of that and the dry side on the the surface of the table that way it'll pull that steam up out of the finish and you won't have to worry about it getting worse and again keep pulling that iron off every 15 seconds just to release any steam that might have been pulled out of that finish and to check and make sure that things aren't getting worse and of course you need to check for that gummy or softening of the finish that some people have said happens when they do this at home and I just want to make a quick note about mayonnaise to remove heat stains. So I was going to try to use mayonnaise on that third stain that you see to the left there. And I decided not to because I have scratches in the finishes that I was afraid um penetrate all the way down to the raw wood and I was afraid that if I put mayonnaise or any other type of oily tests on it that the oils would seep into the wood and cause a stain in the wood and also might cause the Finish to pop off of whatever part of the way whether the oil got into so I decided it was too risky with. My scratched up table top. But I wanted to point it out to you guys in case you have a scratched up table top too or if your table has a damage where the wood is exposed. I wouldn't use vegetable oil or mayonnaise ways to get rid of heat stains. So I actually just used a mix of the iron with steam and my blow dryer to get rid of that third. Stain. Now let's move on to checking on that Vaseline and that baking soda test that I set up three hours ago. So I started by wiping off that baking soda paste that I had made and after three hours it was pretty hard. It didn't have much moisture in it to begin with so I'm assuming most of that evaporated off but as you can see there's not that much of a change to the heat stain on that table with just the baking soda. Next up I removed the Vaseline to see if that made any difference on a heat stain again. This is one of those things that people always say Works to get rid of heat stains but but again there wasn't really that much of a change to the heat stain at all so that was after three whole hours. Maybe if I had left it on overnight but compared to using a blow dryer and getting rid of a huge heat stain in 10 minutes waiting overnight for that Vaseline or that baking soda to work seems like a waste of time.

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• 11:52 So I decided to try toothpaste on it next. So this is a little bit riskier because the toothpaste has chemicals in it. That might also affect the finish on your table so again you want to do this in short testing segments so that you can make sure it's not affecting or damaging the finish on your table. So I only applied that White toothpaste it has to be regular toothpaste. Not gel. I applied it for just one minute to see how it would work because I was also worried not only about the finish getting damaged but also just um the sheen on the Finish looking a little bit more dull than the rest of the table. So the toothpaste could also affect that so after one minute I checked to see what happened with just that toothpaste and I have to say it really didn't make that big of a change. Some people swear by it online but I decided one last test. I was going to do one last test and that was a baking soda and toothpaste mixed together mixture so that is about one-third toothpaste two-thirds baking. Soda mixed together and I left that there for 10 minutes to see if that worked better than the other methods that I'd tried so far.

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• 13:05 So I applied a thick layer evenly across that whole heat stain left it for 10 minutes and then came back to wipe it away and I have to say that was pretty surprised to see that it actually had made a good improvement over just 10 minutes. You can see even better when I removed that painters tape how big the difference is in that section in the middle. So I decided this one's worth an overnight try even though I prefer the blow dryer method if you would prefer to not use heat on your tables finish or if you think you can't use heat for some reason. This baking soda and toothpaste mixture might be the best option for you on your heat marks. So I applied a larger batch of that two-thirds baking soda 1 3 toothpaste to that heat stain the whole heat stain and I left it overnight so now. It's the next morning. It's been about 15 hours. Since I applied this to the heat stain on my table and I'm getting ready to wipe it off and as you'll see in a minute that baking soda and toothpaste did remove the heat stain I would say 98 of it completely gone. I did have a bunch of residue built up just from using this table over the years and from these tests that I did on the heat stains. So I ended up cleaning off my table top completely with vinegar and water mixed together just like a 50 50 mix of vinegar and water and like a Scrub Daddy scrubbing sponge. So it's got a little bit of a texture with a plastic mesh around it just to make sure I got all of the residue off. So I could show you guys the results on removing the heat stains on my wood table and after giving my tabletop a really good cleaning and letting it completely dry. Here is that table top so knowing that there used to be heat stains. There you might be able to see especially that toothpaste and baking soda one just a light bit of a heat stain that's left behind. I'll think I'll put my blow dryer on that one later. But the way the blow dryer and the iron and um worked amazingly well to get rid of those giant heat stains that I put on my tabletop and I have to say I hope this test helped you guys figure out how to get rid of those heat stains so that you don't have to strip your furniture to get it looking nice again. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below or add your tips and tricks thanks for checking out. This video guys.

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