Maintenance & Care
Maintenance & Care
If you have any questions, call us 1-855-OAK-CITY or email us INFO@OAKCITYCUSTOMS.COM!Wood Items
Cleaning
You can clean our products with just warm lightly soapy water! Regular household cleaners and furniture cleaners are also fine. Avoid cleaners with alcohol or heavy solvents as these are unnecessary and are much harsher on the finish.
Long Term Considerations
Wood is a natural product with unique variation, grain character, and was once alive. Therefore wood is susceptible to changes in climate conditions such as moisture, temperature, humidity, and sunlight. Wood will always acclimate to the moisture condition of your space and as such it will expand and contract. Some small cracks are possible to occur and this can be more prominent with larger individual pieces of wood such as slabs, rather than 'Classic Cut' and 'Butcher Block' product which are made from more smaller boards. We dry lumber to 6-10% moisture content to create the same conditions that will be in your home and reduce issues as much as possible. We advise taking some consideration to these variables over the life of your product. Wood wants to be exposed to the same conditions on all sides to resist warping and cracking and potential problems can be avoided by keeping this in mind. Some examples and tips:
Avoid letting water sit on the surface of your table for extended periods of time.
Avoid creating a condition where one side of the table top is sealed such as covering with plastic or other impenetrable surface for long periods. Wood needs to 'breathe' equally. Treat both sides equally.
Avoid locating directly over a heat source such as a vent if possible.
Some types of wood such as Cherry as susceptible to getting a sun tan! Wacky, we know! This generally is not a problem since our finishes have UV blockers and most of the woods we use are really not affected. Just keep an eye on letting something sit in one spot for extended periods of time such as months or years without moving.
Touch Up & Long Term Maintenance
In general you should not have to touch up or perform maintenance on your items. Routine cleaning will suffice.
If you find that your table or item needs more than cleaning can accomplish, clean and relatively presentable surfaces can be improved by the following methods:
Polyurethane Finishes:
Car wax such as Carnauba paste wax or a furniture paste wax can be applied. This will result in a vibrant, shiny, and more slick surface. This is also a great way to extend the life of a polyurethane finish by reducing friction in high traffic environments such as commercial applications.
Most everything will clean off but if you get something really bad on your table or just scratches and wear it may be possible to polish the surface with 0000 steel wool. We often polish Polyurethane finished tables with 0000 Extra Fine steel wool to give a more matte and smooth natural looking finish. This works best on the Polyurethane finish and can be a suitable way to freshen up the finish if something bad happens or after heavy use over many years. Light to medium pressure and with the grain.
If you want to do both, start with the steel wool and then wax.
Rubio Monocoat Finish:
One of the nicest things about this finish is the ease of touch up! This finish applies without any overlap marks so you cant apply too much, the wood soaks up only one layer. This means that you can lightly sand a damaged area and apply new finish to just this area.
If your entire product has become well worn you can hand sand with the grain with 220 grit sandpaper and apply a new coat of 'Rubio". This is quick and easy to do and is non toxic.
Something else? Just send us an email, were here to help!
Metal Items
Cleaning
You can clean our products with just warm lightly soapy water! Regular household cleaners and furniture cleaners are also fine. Avoid cleaners with alcohol or heavy solvents as these are unnecessary and are much harsher on the finish.
Touch Up & Long Term Maintenance
We use powder coat for most all our metal finishes so you should not have issues. This is the strongest finish that can generally be applied to metal.
If you need to make a touch up, an enamel paint such as Rustoleum will adhere fine. You can also use nail polish for small spots.
If something terrible happens, the metal parts can have a new powder coat finish applied directly over the old powder coat.