Repairing Heat Damage to Dining Table?

Someone left a burning candle on my veneer dining room table which left a bubble and a big white spot on it. I tried almost everything including mayo, olive oil, Liquid Gold, and vinegar, nothing has removed it. I put a tablecloth over it which is a pain have to take it off/on when it is in use, because it is cloth. Any suggestions?

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Anonymous

May 28, 20163 found this helpful

Best Answer

I would like to offer a correction to the answers here. The root cause of the "cloudy" white stain on wood tables caused by hot plates is the moisture that is trapped within the varnish on the table.
This is specially for really hard old reclaimed wood tables (teak, casuani, etc). These tables are typically finished with "oil" varnish or polish and not water. Now I tried everything from hot iron to baking soda and everything else in between. The one thing that made is worse was using a steam iron. That's because with steam it caused the oil polish on the table trap more moisture and it made it worse (like others have also seen if you google). The trick is to get the moisture out. So with a water based finish using a simple iron on low heat works great.

However after 4 hours I realized that for oil based polish you need a very hot iron and a kitchen towel. This is very important because unlike water polish with oil polish I realized I need to get the table extremely hot and then it "pushes" the water out of the table (yes you can see beads of it) and the towel should soak it up right away otherwise it goes back.
So to summarize for oil based finishes you need a dry iron at max temp out on a kitchen towel on the table and left there for about 20-30 seconds on each spot and then wipe off the water beads right away. Repeat until no more water comes out. This is different from water based finish. Do NOT use a steam iron on a oil based finish. Hope this helps. Thanks.

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Jackie H.
Silver Post Medal for All Time! 355 Posts

September 3, 20160 found this helpful

Thank you for your expert opinion on this subject. You seem to know exactly what you are talking about. I will be trying this right away! It sounds fool-proof!

Thanks for sharing your expertise! :)

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lesliespeech

October 9, 20180 found this helpful

How do I tell if my cherry 25 year old coffee table had an oil or water polish?

Reply Was this helpful? Yes