When good lucite goes bad

We were renting some pieces for the set for the pilot for the TV show SwingTown and for the 5th time I was going over the care of the lucite and acrylic pieces to the prop master. I was being a little over protective but the last load of stuff I had seen at a prop sale contained several pieces of hazed lucite. It may have come from another shop already messed up or it may have happened during the shoot. I wasn't to jazzed to find out using my store stock as the confirmation.

I won't buy hazed lucite, in my opinion it's gone bad. Lucite in a purplish smoke color has hazed. I'm sure there is a technical name for the hazing but basically window cleaner or anything else with high ammonia content will haze Lucite. Real lucite reacts poorly with Window cleaner, strangely plastic isn't bothered by it. Hazing is not instantaneous, but with repeated applications and high heat like sitting near a window or under studio lights, the reaction can be fairly rapid.

Pure heat can cause internal crackling. Neither can be cured. Hazing cannot be polished out and crackling cannot be filled. Once I was told by a less than stellar dealer that hazing can be removed. It can't. It's all about proper care and feeding from the start.
If you don't like the purplish color, don't buy it thinking you can polish it out. You can't.

I've wanted to post a piece on vintage lucite for a while but the last large pieces we had, a giant Hollywood Regency desk and a gorgeous heavy Italian Chrome and Lucite chair, didn't have any real issues to post about. So today I was excited to find a nice Charles Hollis Jones vanity bench in need of full, but not intensive, restoration.

How dirty can it get?



That's just not right. This is almost 80% lack of cleaning. And 20% poor care and consideration.
The rotating bearings on the underside of this piece were made in Italy, a high quality piece that got lost along the way. It's ok, she'll be a glamor girl again shortly.

We recommend this stuff for cleaning real Lucite, Lexan and Polycarbonate


You can get it in the flooring section of home hardware stores. Just remember - Pink & Blue Can. This stuff is excellent, it foams a bit and loosens all sorts of dirt and grime. You might not know that an item is actually yellowed from nicotine until you go over it with this a few times.

So once your piece is cleaned up, it's time to assess the true damage. Chips, flakes, surface scratches, gouges, rust to trim pieces, upholstery.
Chips and flakes are permanent so it depends where they are. On the underside, that's one thing. Font and center? that's another.
For a difficult to find piece like a CHJ rotating vanity bench, we're a little more forgiving than if it was just some bland bent piece of clear plastic.

Also bear in mind, upholstery is almost a non issue. If the piece is great, you'll want to reupholster it to match your decor. If the upholstery is a mess and the piece is of marginal quality to begin with, you don't want it anyways.

How do you tell the difference between lucite and clear plastic? The first clue is weight. If you pick something up and it weighs WAY more than you expected, it's most likely Lucite, Lexan or Polycarbonate. Newer plastic weighs nothing compared to the heft of a solid piece of lucite furniture. This small bench weighs almost 40lbs, the same bench in acrylic would be under 20 lbs. It's a real difference you can feel.

Plastic LOOKS like plastic. Lucite looks like dense clear resin, Plastic looks like clear plastic trying to look like glass.
Handle enough pieces of both and you'll get a feel for it. If you haven't handled a lot of pieces, you'll think I'm nuts for professing to spot a difference. That's ok, it's why I do what I do.

This difference in density is part of the reason vintage Lucite can go toe to toe with brand new acrylic and kick it's butt every time. Real lucite is tough, plastic is brittle inexpensive stuff and frankly imho not suited to furniture applications.

So this is the same piece cleaned:

Better already but we still have to address the surface scratches near the base, the bent chrome wheel caps, the seat bearings AND the upholstery.
Which I'll do tomorrow. Removing scratches is a long elbow grease intensive process, but worth the results.
The bench will need re-upholstery, a small and easy job. I have three choices at hand Grey Suede, White Patent (so 90s!) or White Tibetan Lamb (So 2009! lol) we might just go with pure and simple muslin since whom ever buys it will most likely have a fabric preference different from mine.

Next post will be disassembly, cleaning, polishing out surface scratches, and upholstery.