Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - Laminate buckling on cupboard doors

I hope this is the right area, this is my first posting on this site.

I have been refinishing cupboard doors this summer. They are red oak, and I'm sure the doors are laminated.

This afternoon I used some wood bleach to take out some 'gunk' from around the area of the pull. Soon after, I noticed the wood (laminate) buckling. There are about (4) four inch long rows of raised wood, raised about 1/4" long. One of these raised areas appears to be cracked about an inch in length.

What can I do, if anything, to flatten this down again? The door is sanded down to bare wood.

This is the only door that this has happened to. I have wood bleached alot of them. Then I put have stained, and three coats of varnish, topcoating them with wax. What went wrong and how can I fix?

thanks!

The water in the bleach penetrated the veneer layer and loosened the adhesive. I suspect you left the bleach in place too long. If you used oxalic acid, you normally see results within 60 seconds, after which you wipe the piece dry.

Take a clean cotton cloth, fold it to about 4 thicknesses - a good old T-shirt folded over works well. Place this over the buckled area.

Set your iron on medium high (no steam). When it has reached temperature, try ironing the buckling out. Many adhesives will remelt when heated in this fashion, and a steady pressure with the iron will help re-attach the surface layer to the substrate.

It doesn't work ALL the time, but enough so it's the first thing I try in similar situations.

thanks George.
I followed your instructions as carefully as I could, and it's a no-go. The smaller buckle is better, but still raised.

The larger buckle is maybe 'softer' in appearance, but still springing up.

Is there anything like a glue I can inject inside to adhear it or something? Or what then, shave it off and use wood-fill?

thanks for further advising me on this.

Gabby:

Take a brand new singe edge razor blade and cut through the middle of the buckle, going with the grain. Use a thin knife blade (I use an art palette knife) to work glue under the buckled area. Cover this with a piece of wax paper, then stack as much weight as possible on top of that - half a set of encyclopeadias usually works well!

The wax paper will keep you from gluing whatever you use for weight to the door itself. Leave it overnight, remove the weight, and use the razor blade to carefully scrape away any glue that seeped out.

Ordinary Elmer's yellow wood glue will work, although I prefer TiteBond II.

Hi George,
I am just today getting to your well laid out instructions. I had both a razor blade and the glue you mentioned.

It certainly is looking better. It doesn't look like it will be perfectly flat, and I'm sure it's me and not the technique, but at least their are not channels of air pockets on the lower portion of the door where the pull is.

I'm hoping the glue can be removed enough for the staining to be absorbed. Wondering if I should have stained the door first.

Thank you, George!

Assuming you used regular Elmer's yellow carpenters glue, 00 steel wool combined with white vinegar (just dampen the pad) will remove the surface glue enough to alleviate stain variation...

George,
I should have left well-enough alone. This is going from bad to worse.

This morning I used white vinegar on a damp steelwool pad (0000) and rubbed off the surface glue.

When I rechecked the area, as it dried out, the grain turned jet black - just the type of stuff I was attempting to bleach out in the beginning...I assume some chemical reaction to something.

One frustrated refinisher here.

I just wanted to add a few things. yes you should always stain (if posible) before gluing. If you have a woodworkers supplie store of some kind in your area you can get siringe type glue aplicators and you can inject glue into needed areas. A damp rag H20 will remove glue when it is still wet. try oxcilic acid to lighten wood before regluing.

George and #1Charles,

Happy to report that all my cupboard doors are now refinished and hung. I must say they all look great and I'm very pleased.

Thank you both for walking me through this delaminating ordeal. I'm sure I got them way to wet when first bleaching them out, and thankful that only one door had this problem.

I've printed out all this good information and will file it for future projects I have planned.

Thank alot!