Man needs advice on strippers.
Disclaimer: Not an expert. And I've been told I can be . . . uh . . . opinionated. LOL.
I have refinished a lot of furniture on the past 35 years (and a whole houseful of 1926 doors).
You don't want to use paint stripper. Paint stripper is for PAINT. There is no paint on this end table. It has a clear finish. You want to use a "refinisher" to DISSOLVE the finish away. If it is shellac or lacquer, then alcohol or lacquer thinner will remove them. If not, then go to "Formby's Refinisher" or a generic equivalent. Brush on the finish remover and let it work a while, then use tons of rags or cheap paper towels to wipe it off. Repeat until the endtable looks very "clean" with no smudges or sticky areas.
The REALLY BAD NEWS . . .this stuff isn't cheap, and you need to do an incredibly thorough job because you're about to seal whatever you leave behind under the new finish . . . and you'll use a lot more than you plan to . . . but dissolving the old finish is the hardest part. You'll be home free after that.
You DON'T want to scrape the wood. That just damages the wood. The wood on your end table appears to be in perfect condition. It's the finish on top that's bad and needs to removed. So leave the wood alone and just remove the finish.
To clarify, it is impossible to completely remove a clear finish from wood. When first applied, shellac soaked into the pores of the wood and the shellac down in the pores is effectively permanently there. You could go through superhuman efforts to get the shellac out of the pores, but then you'd have no patina left and the wood would have raised grain.
So the object is to dissolve as much of the old finish as you can. And for crevices, you don't use a scrapper, you use old toothbrushes, fingernail brushes, and an indispensable new addition to our toolbox, "synthetic steel wool".
Synthetic steel wool is what you probably have in the kitchen and refer to it as "that green scrubby pad." Chemicals don't eat it away. And it doesn't leave 10,000 tiny bits of steel wool on your work. Woodworking catalogs have it in different grades (just like steel wool), but the green stuff from the grocery store will do. I personally buy a big bundle at a woodworking show I attend annualy and use it for EVERYTHING under the sun (the kitchen, cleaning bathrooms, cutting it into a circle and sticking it to my random orbital sander).
A dental pick or equivalent is fine for intricate places if you have no other choice. Your goal is to AVOID RAISING THE GRAIN OF THE WOOD.
Unfortunately, that is sometimes easier said than done. But if you dissolve the finish, instead of scraping/stripping/picking it off, your sanding should be either zero or 2 minutes of work hitting it very lightly with 400 grit paper or with the synthetic steel wool. How do you determine if something needs to be sanded? You run your hands over it and if it feels smooth, then it doesn't need sanding.
I have NOTHING AGAINST SANDING. I sand bare wood all the time in preparation for a finish. But this wood has already been sanded before it was finished. Unless you raise the grain, it will need almost zero sanding.
Now, a piece of bad news. Wood that has the finish removed doesn't accept stain very well. Why? Because the pores of the wood still have old finish clogging them. Hopefully, you won't need to stain . . . you'll love the color as is.
If you do need a bit of stain (and you probably will to blend away knicks and deeper scratches, I'd first wipe an oil-based stain on, let it sit a couple of minutes, and wipe it off. If it looks blotchy, then the only good way to apply stain is by a sprayer so it "lays evenly on top" of the wood. Followed by spraying a finish so that you don't move the stain around by brushing it. Which means you need a pretty good sprayer for that.
Finishes? Fortunately, they are 500% better than they were 100 years ago. As a teenager, I refinished tons of furniture for my Mom and those finishes look as good today as they did 30 years ago.
Shellac is not a finish that is widely utilized any more because it's not very durable. As you noted, it become brittle and flakes off. No finish expert here, but I think it's a UV deterioration problem. Shellac is very hard to find. I think you have to buy shellac flakes and dissolve them yourself in alcohol. Not convenient to recreate another finish that will soon fail.
Why was shellac so popular? Because it's highly colored (amber/orange) and imparted a warmth to wood, even to cold looking woods like Walnut.
So what to use? Sprayed lacquer is a beautiful finish (even spraying it from aerosol cans looks amazingly good). BUT it's that finish that gets white rings under wet glasses, so probably not the best for an end table.
Polyurethane is probably the ugliest finish I've ever seen. If you do decide to use it, use the "wipeable" stuff (where you put it on with a rag), rather than the brushed stuff. Brushing it is like brushing honey on a piece. Sticky . . .gummy . . . every brush mark shows . . . and it fills with dust while it dries.
My personal preference are the oil based finishes, particularly TUNG OIL.
The good part about Tung Oil . . . easy to apply. Just dampen a lint free rag (cut up cotton t-shirt) and lightly wipe the entire surface.
The bad part about Tung Oil . . . you have to put on a lot of applications. Wipe it on very thinly . . . wait a day . . . the wood will have unevenly soaked up the tung oil (the more porous sections with end grain and oblique grain will have soaked it up like a sponge). That's a good thing. You're trying to get an even substrate for your later applications.
Reapply. Wait a day. Reapply . . . Wait a day . . . Reapply . . . continue for as long as it takes until you've built up an even, beautiful finish with no brush marks or streaks. No sanding between coats required. If you get anything in it (lint, gnats, DOG HAIR . . . ), just hit it with your synthetic steel wool and a clean rag, and keep going.
The finish will feel slightly oily, but over the next year will greatly harden. And then it won't feel oily.
Don't wax over your tung oil, use lemon oil on your dust rag, and it will look better than the day you finished it.
If 10 years down the road, you have a scratch or dull spot, just wipe on a new coat of tung oil over the whole thing. Done.
Good luck with your project. Be sure to post an "after" photo.
And thanks to all the FReepers for their suggestions!
Hopefully, this thread gave folks a chance to think about things and learn a bit!
I will post a pic or two when it’s done!
Update.
OK. A couple things I found out.
A friend of mine saw it and we’re both convinced it is mahogany, and it was shellaced.
I have it almost totally stripped and sanded now. The top table piece and the uprights are put together with pegs, and using very gentle force, I was able to disassemble it.
The button thingies are actually long, fine strips which were attached with very thin pins. I was also able to get them off.
The wood is really beautiful, about the color of oak but with a much finer grain. And quite a bit harder than oak.
I chose a stain called “Cabot Red Mahogany” to use and tested it on an upright and it went on great. Thinking now I might use a reddish but lighter stain on the flat table surface areas.
If it’s nice today I will snap some pics.
