We had a great day at the Charnwood Open Day last week and all of this week’s questions have come from there. Welcome to the new subscribers from the show.

We’ll start with a slightly different question this week, from a lady who had just taken up bas-relief carving. She wanted to maintain the colour but get a nice shine on her work. As the pieces she was creating were fairly small we suggested using Cellulose Sanding Sealer followed by WoodWax 22 Clear, but to polish the wax using our Hand Polishing Brush to make sure that the wax was polished properly, something a cloth might not do in this situation.

We were asked about the difference between Finishing Oil and Hard Wax Oil.
We see Hard Wax Oil as an upgrade to Finishing Oil. Whereas Finishing Oil has an amber tone to it, is quite thin and takes about eight hours to dry, Hard Wax Oil is clear, thicker and therefore builds up quicker, and is dry in about four hours. Both have their place in our range and it’s always good to be able to offer a choice.

Someone approached us who has one of our Buffing Wheel Kits; he was having trouble getting a good finish with it and the white compound was leaving a smear on the wood.
This is fairly easy to prevent, it’s vital to use the smallest amount of Compound 2 possible. It’s easy to add more if needed but cleaning it off the wood is much harder.

This led to a second question about how to clean the surplus compound from the wheel, the answer to which is either warm soapy water (but this can take ages to dry) or to abrade the edge of the wheel with an 80 grit abrasive to wear away the top surface to expose clean cotton underneath.

And finally this week, still on the Buffing Wheel Kit, we were asked if our Friction Polish can be buffed on it. The answer is yes but it’s best not to; Friction Polish is relatively soft and it’s too easy to wear through it and spoil the finish rather than buff it. Instead we recommend Hard Wax Oil, Finishing Oil, Cellulose Sanding Sealer or any of our lacquers for buffing.

That’s another week’s worth of questions, there’ll be more next Friday!

Have a good week

Terry