Acetone damaged finish

[louist457]

Hey guys,
New to this forum and a complete novice at woodworking/finishing! My parents got a new dining table and my girlfriend has managed to spill acetone on it (as shown in picture). Any idea on how I could fix it? Have included a second picture to give a better idea of the finish.
Any help is greatly appreciated,
Louis

 

[ED65]

Hi welcome to the forum. It's hard to be sure what's happened here going only from photos as white marks happen to various finishes due to various causes, but try this little test and report back: wet a fingertip with water or spit and wipe it over part of one of the white marks.

If the white goes away you're in luck and this is easily remedied, if it doesn't there may be no easy fix for you unfortunately, although there are a couple of tricks you can try that might work.

 

[custard]

An acetone spill is as bad as it gets. Dressing tables often used to have a sheet of glass on the top, specifically because of acetone nail varnish remover. I've known cases where a woman is really careful not to spill acetone on the table, but she wipes the old nail varnish away with a tissue then puts the used tissue on the table, that's often just as bad.

There are some aerosol repair lacquers intended for patch repairs, you'd need 338 or 339 special repair lacquer,

https://konig-uk.co.uk/aerosols

however they're not cheap, plus it's one of those jobs where you have to do it a few times before you get good enough to make it viable. The tricky parts are feathering the repair in around the edges and matching the sheen (the expensive aerosols, like the one above, sometimes have a slightly variable sheen that can be adjusted by buffing in order to blend in).

The most realistic solution is to strip the entire surface and refinish. Your local antique restorer might be able to help or you could have a go at refinishing yourself. The fact that the table is new is actually in your favour, after a few years the timber itself will change colour so you'd have to do the entire table to deliver a convincing job, here you'd probably get away with just the top surface. From the photos it looks liked a sprayed surface (if it's a shop bought table then it's almost certainly sprayed) in which case a satin water based polyurethane varnish will be your least obtrusive option.

Good luck!