Started on the wood today. I was fishing about in the dash getting the broken heater lever out (I'm not the first one in here, there were two washers under one side of the heater lever trim plate and non under the other....), so I decided to go ahead and remove the windshield trim and clean it up.

The finish was cracked and bubbled something terrible. Nasty stuff, nitrocelluose laquer. The Formby's Paint Remover I had handy didn't work very well -- the laquer turns into a sticky, slimy mess, made much worse by the thick gunk in the stripper. Cleaned off all I could and went out and bought some regular Formby's stripper and some stripping pads (foam with green scotchbrite on one side). Worked somewhat better, but the pads hold the laquer after it dissoves in the methylene choride, so I was just spreading it around.

After what seemed like forever, I finally let it dry. Still had some shiny spots that were tacky, so I got out the laquer thinner and some 0000 steel wool. That did the trick -- got rid of the remains of the laquer.

Needless to say, I was doing this in the back yard -- no way I will EVERY use that much solvent inside.

The wood was very bleached from the sun -- dark reddish where the trim covered it, so I got out some water soluble aniline Cherry stain. Three coats of that darkened it up nicely, probably not the original color, but very close to the new one Hans has.

Both ends of the trim have water damage -- one end will need to be re-glued and some of the veneer is torn, but I'm not going to try to make it look original, just refinish it. There are "spider web" marks from where the orignial finished cracked -- the wood itself is scared and there is some dirt embedded too, but I only took off what would come out with stripper. I'm afraid to sand it (wasn't even too sure about using the scotchbrite) since the veneer isn't much thicker than a piece of heavy paper. It was nice and smooth, amazingly, so I left it as is. I'd rather have water stains, etc with a nice finish than the mess that was in there, and I can always go whole hog someday and replace the veneer.

One thing to watch out for with this stuff -- it appears that it's laid up "plywood", laid with hide glue. That means it can be repaired fairly easily by steaming it apart (I will simply steam the original veneer off and re-veneer with new French Walnut -- or American walnut, or Cherry, or whatever) if I want to later. However, warm water will cause the entire assembly to delaminate -- the condition of most of the trim bits I've seen in junkyards. Hot weather and a thunderstorm with the windows open is really bad news for this stuff!

Ill let you know how it goes, will also try to post pics -- didn't think of that today until I was finished staining it.

Peter

__________________
1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!