The end of embalmed wood

I'm about to rave about a new non-toxic paint stripper, called soygel.

I love wood, which is why I dislike the plasticised finishes on so many items of furniture. Sure, you can put your coffee cup down on it without it marking, but sometimes the polyurethane is so thick - and tinted - it obscures the grain. One scratch and its ruined forever, there's no recovery. (With oil and wax, you just add some more and buff till the mark is gone.) And polyurethaned wood doesn't feel like wood, it feels like plastic. A book I once read on fine carpentery techniques called it 'embalmed wood'. I wish I could recall the author's name, because that's a genius phrase.

Soygel is the answer. As the name suggests, its a byproduct of soybeans. Its so non-toxic you supposedly can eat it out of the container (I wouldn't.) You can't eat it once its mixed with paint, you don't know whats in that stuff. It smells faintly fishy to me, in a 10 litre quantity, its not offensive in smaller doses. Compared to paintstripper it has no smell worth mentioning.

The thicker the paint/varnish, the thicker you apply the soygel. It goes on a bit runny and thickens up to the consistency of jelly (aka jello) once it combines with the paint/varnish. Two hints - use a brush that doesn't have a painted handle otherwise you'll end up with soygel on the paintbrush and it will lift off staining your hands. Don't use a foam 'brush' - the soygel seemed to break down the foam.

Wait a while then use a plastic scraper to literally scrape the paint-infused gel off the surface.  You don't need anything as aggressive as metal scraper. Wipe the scraper off onto paper towel. A while is around 30 minutes but can be up to 2 hours. If you leave it too long, it dries hard again, so you just apply some more soygel. On a flat surface, and with the optimum amount of time, you can just scraper the gunk off the edge of the item straight into a waiting container.

At the end, wipe the item down with warm soapy water and any residue will be removed. Unless your item is very damaged there is NO NEED TO SAND. Really.

Life will never be the same again. Viva human ingenuity.