Hi

How are you? I hope you’ve had a good week, mine has been busy as always, and it’s been exciting as our friend and now-intern Nathanael Griffiths started back with us on Monday. It’s great to have a fresh (and younger!) pair of eyes looking at what we do, and suggesting how we can improve. He’ll be with us for the next six months, which means he’ll be with us at Harrogate too. He’s a great turner and loves to share his knowledge, so if you’re coming up to the show be sure to come and say hello.

We sell a lot of our Spirit Stains to picture framers, they’re very popular with them. We were contacted by one this week asking lots of questions about using them, and how to get the best from them.
The questions asked are slightly specialist towards this particular industry, but most of the principles here apply to general woodworking as well. See what you think.

Moulding for picture framing is often supplied in long lengths, often about 2.4m. Should they be stained before cutting to size, or after?
I’d recommend cutting the timber to size first, and then staining them.There are several advantages to this:

• The stain can be overlapped onto the end of the wood, the part that should be inside the mitre. Doing this means that if the join isn’t quite perfect, there won’t be a strip of plain wood showing that needs to be hidden.
• It avoids the potential for a build-up of stain in the corners, if the cloth or brush is allowed to linger there slightly too long – easy to do when a change of direction is needed.
• If any glue used to make the join splurges onto the front of the frame, this could affect how the stain is absorbed, resulting in a different colour; if the stain is already applied, this won’t matter.

I should add that this is my theory, based on my knowledge of finishing rather than my experience of framing!

Would, our caller asked, applying multiple coats of stain give a darker colour?

The stains are translucent, so yes, they will. The colour of the coat below will show through, so the coat on top will be slightly darker. The main colour change occurs with the stain is applied, of course; further coats give a much less dramatic effect, but will still add a subtle hue to the finish.

And finally, (well, there were a few more questions, but this is the last one I’ll use today!), our Liming Wax recommends against putting a lacquer on top of it. What should be used instead? For a picture frame, a wax such as WoodWax 22 would be fine; if a harder wearing finish was required, Hard Wax Oil is a good choice as it has the flexibility needed to sit on top of a wax without cracking.

I haven’t written one of the ‘behind the scenes’ Newsletters yet, it will come! One of the topics I wanted to cover was about how we deliver our orders. It’s a constant struggle to find a good service at a good price. And I’m pleased to say we’ve just done a new deal which means we can drop the price of our mail order deliveries to £6. Plus (and this is a Chestnuteer exclusive until I can figure out how to make the website understand it!), on orders over £20 the delivery cost drops to £4 when the voucher code ‘Delivery Offer’ at checkout. This offer will last until Christmas, and I thought it was worth including to let everyone know.

I’ll be back again next week, all the best

Terry