Did I ruin my table finish with wood cleaner?

Endaro

We recently moved in to a new place and bought a new table. After an exhausting few hours of putting it and the chairs together, I noticed there was a fine dust from the factory on the top of it, and I thought cleaning it up a bit before the lady of the house sees the new table would be a good idea. We had a can of Pledge that we always used on our last table so I went for that. After a quick wipe down I noticed all these sections across the table where you could see the small pieces of wood joined together to make the tabletop:

It seems the cleaner is darkening some of the wood/sections more than others. Is this permanent? Did I ruin our new table within an hour of building it? I unfortunately don't know what the table is made of, but I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it was sealed to prevent something like this. Googling hasn't been very helpful, as most of the cases of cleaner darkening wood seem to be for unfinished/unsealed tables, and I don't know what these wood sections are called to google for them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

bowen

Huh. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

I'd call up the people who you got it from and ask what gives. Also going forward, don't use pledge on hardwoods, soap + water works just as good, if not better.

MichaelLC

Looks almost like a patch job on the table, looking at how square the area is. Is there a sticker underneath work more info? Usually will be one from the manufacture/builder.

Pledge is terrible, throw it in the garbage.

Endaro

MichaelLC wrote: »

Looks almost like a patch job on the table, looking at how square the area is. Is there a sticker underneath work more info? Usually will be one from the manufacture/builder.

Pledge is terrible, throw it in the garbage.

Just a notice about routinely checking/tightening screws for safety reasons.

There seem to be about a half dozen of those sections, of varying darkness. Theyre all about the size of your hand.

Thanks for the tips, I guess we'll try a tablecloth for a bit and toss that pledge away!

MichaelLC

Update: Asked my wife who works in the furniture business.

It's different pieces of veneer that were used to assemble the table. Pledge had no effect, but better not to use it. Be careful with cups, etc. on it - can easily get water rings.

bowen

Is that a thing? It seems to be an eyesore.

darkmayo

I've seen that before on tables, depends on how lazy the builder is.

ZeitgeistHeist

This is unusual for an entire table top, but MichaelLC's wife is right about them being veneer joints. Usually they're used in "edgebanding," where you have the front piece of a shelf or something which, when cut out of solid wood, would show a strange texture/different grain direction if veneer wasn't applied to it. That's normal.

This isn't normal, though. Usually a full sheet of veneer (they can come in 8x10 sheets, usually) is applied over a whole surface. Can I ask where the table came from?