Hi again
Back from Didcot, I’ll be in Ireland when you’re reading this! Enjoying meeting those who come along, do be sure to mention the newsletter if you see me!

Whilst at the Toolpost I was asked what to use to thin Friction Polish when you’re getting to the end of the bottle and, due to natural evaporation, it’s starting to get thick and gungey. You can use meths to dilute the polish, but the purple tint could show on light woods, so Spirit Thinners is a much better alternative.

We’ve covered the tinting of our lacquers before, but we were asked this week about colouring one enough to make a solid, opaque coating which will be very hardwearing. This isn’t really possible, and frankly it’s easier to get a car body paint and use that, it should do everything needed and can be overcoated with Acrylic Gloss Lacquer if you really feel the need.

A bit old school this one, ‘what can be used on the inside of a shaving bowl?’ we were asked, ‘without making it look plasticky’. The best option we have is the Melamine Lacquer, which is highly water resistant and should stand up to this use for quite a while, although most finishes will break down in time under these conditions.

And part two of the question above, should the outside of the bowl be coated as well? This is very important, as it’s vital that moisture can’t get in and attack the finish from below, that will make it delaminate in no time at all.

I don’t know if we can really get away with this as question 5 this week but I’m including it to give an idea of the things we have to cope with here sometimes. The question, from one of our stockists in Germany, was where is their order – a rather large pallet of goods sent out at the end of October. We worked out that the wrong pallet had been delivered to them but where theirs was was a mystery. Whilst we have marine insurance to cover things like this we were dreading having to re-assemble the order as it all has to be labelled and filled to order using German labels! Fortunately, after some frantic phone calls the pallet was found. In Sweden! I don’t know why either, but we’re hoping it’ll be with the customer in Germany this week.

That’s all for now, I’m hoping for an easier week next week…although it’s nearly time for the Harrogate Show so I think that’s just a vain hope!

I hope your week is better

Cheers

Terry