Thanks for your thoughts, Martin.

Yesterday afternoon I got to work on the kitchen floor with a lemon.
Cut it into halves and then rubbed the stained area hard with the two
halves until such time as I had pressed out all the juice by using the
flesh of the lemon to rub the juice into the wood.

After ten minutes, the result was as if a miracle had occurred!

You can imagine our relief ! The beautiful oak floor was back to
pristine condition. No need for sanding.

How wonderful is the humble lemon, eh? Amazing.

24 hours have passed with no darkening of the area on which the iron
sulphate "solution" was smeared, so I'll soon be getting to work with
some floor polish soon. (The lemon has really left the wood "naked".)

So, many thanks for your confirmation, and thanks too to the other
people who replied.

Was Pete C's suggestion that we use urine on the kitchen floor a joke?
It would of course get into the cracks between the planks and eventually
reek. Not nice in a kitchen! Not nice anywhere.


Eddy.



Martin Brown wrote:

Vinegar almost certainly will not hack it at all.

- apply lemon juice, wait five minutes, rub, then rinse off

Lemon juice or better citric acid might.
The fruit acid will with a bit of luck reduce the iron(III) tanin
complex to soluble iron(II) salt which you must then remove. You must
get the stuff mopped up once it fades and not spread it to adjacent
areas or you will have a bigger area affected.

The fruit acid make the complex pale but oxygen in the air will cause
any remaining iron in the wood to darken again later.