Restore a wooden gear knob?

[JonB]

My Plus 2 has an original wooden knob, but the varnish is gone on the top half. It's black from dirt and sweat, yuk. Is it feasible to restore? If so, how?

Cheers all
JonB

[draenog]

My Plus 2 has an original wooden knob, but the varnish is gone on the top half. It's black from dirt and sweat, yuk. Is it feasible to restore? If so, how?

Cheers all
JonB

Yes, I restored mine earlier this year. This was in two parts 1) the wooden knob, and 2) the 4-speed badge insert.

First I carefully removed the badge from the knob. This is glued in and level with the surrounding wood, but using a sharp pointed blade I was able to work round the badge exerting pressure until it finally came out.

With the badge out, I was able to sand off the remaining varnish (wasn't much left). I then lightly sanded the whole knob, and then applied various cleaning agents to try and remove the oil and staining. This was only partially successful - there was still some staining left as it had soaked into the wood and I didn't want to take too much off the surface by sanding (this meant the final result was darker than it would have been originally, but still acceptable).

For varnishing I used Rustoleum spray polyurethane clear gloss, applied in several thin layers, sanded down between coats with 1500 grit sand paper. Others appear to have achieved good results dipping the knob into a tin of varnish and letting it run off.

The badge was quite worn, with the plating worn off the gear pattern showing the base metal (brass, copper?). I lightly sanded the edges to remove some nicks from removing it. After cleaning in an alkaline cleaner, and a further pickling step, it was replated with bright nickel, which is a good substitute for chrome (you can buy nickel plating kits online - I already had one which I've used to replate various things). Finally, I painted the background black to highlight the gear pattern, and glued it back into the knob (the background would originally have been black).

I'll take a photo when I get home from work.

[RichardHawkins]

My car is a 1968 S4 Elan. It has a round wooden gear knob with a black and silver Lotus emblem. I had my nose badge and gear knob badge refurbished by Vaughtons of Birmingham. Unfortunately they lost my gear knob badge, and had to make a replacement from scratch. I enquired what the price of a gear knob badge would be? The answer was ?35 for one off, coming down to ?3.50 each for a batch of fifty.

Richard Hawkins

[Gordon Sauer]

Wood bleach/oxalic acid is a useful agent to lighten darkened-by-use-wood and than bring it all back with a stain to match what it's supposed to look like. And I use polyurethanes with UV protectors as with boats. Gordon Sauer

[draenog]

I'll take a photo when I get home from work.

[draenog]

Unfortunately this poor quality image is all I can find of the knob before restoration...

before.jpg (13.93 KiB) Viewed 2430 times

[JohnP]

A beautifully restored knob! Well polished.

Sadly, my knob was a wonky aftermarket knob with a limp fit on my stick.

My pride was restored by a replacement knob from Matty's which while not the same as the real thing is still capable of fooling most people.

A great item for your Christmas present list.

Incidentally JonB, congratulations on your purchase. Lovely looking car from photos. I hope it gives you as much fun and pleasure as I have had from mine.

[JonB]

Thanks, John.

I have a lot of things to do to it; much more than I thought when I bought it, so it's a good job it was reasonably cheap. More stupid questions coming soon...

[draenog]

A beautifully restored knob! Well polished.

Thanks. I'm glad to be good at something

[billwill]

Many, many moons ago, I replaced my broken gearknob with a wooden ball bought in a houseware shop and originally intended to be a knob on a stair banister.

I used it for many years just sanded smooth and the natural oil from my hand gave it a sheen.

Later when doing other refurb work c2000-2001, Vegantune of Finchley appear to have inset a badge and varnished it for me.

[Bombay Racing Green]

This has recently been posted:

https://youtu.be/A1ykpfB-tks

[SENC]

Made me wonder why he even bothered with cleaning and sanding when he put a stain on it! IMO, if you're going to that trouble, then use the natural beauty of the walnut. He mentioned adding a second coat to make the grain pop - but as you can see all it did was make the wood browner and hide the grain. A better solution to highlight the grain and natural beauty would have been properly applied linseed oil (or better yet, real tung oil) - though anything would have been better than adding another color.

I bought a replacement from Matty as mine had been cemented to the shifter (which I was replacing). It isn't bad, but I'm looking for the right chunk of walnut to turn my own.

[JonB]

I looked a bit further for tips on cleaning wood.

Seems white spirit would restore the wood, but does need a while to dry off, despite what that fellow said.

I'm going to try it. Cammot do any harm, after all the bloke restoring the knob did, but he gave up before it had dried.

[draenog]

I looked a bit further for tips on cleaning wood.

Seems white spirit would restore the wood, but does need a while to dry off, despite what that fellow said.

I'm going to try it. Cammot do any harm, after all the bloke restoring the knob did, but he gave up before it had dried.

I personally would use meths rather than white spirit - dries quicker and less likely to leave a residue.

[Orsom Weels]

I have a pal who's hobby is restoring old furniture, I've seen him use meths to get oil & grease stains out of old kitchen tables, he soaks them with the meths, then mops it off with rags & to finish of he chucks a match on it & burns it off Seem to work quite well though.

Regards, Tim

PS, i accept no responsibility if you burn your knob to a crisp