WEEK COMMENCING 25 FEBRUARY 2018

Your weekly Q&A Session with Chestnut Products

Hello again

I hope you’ve had a good week – if you’re reading this fresh in your inbox I’ll be on a much-needed holiday so I sincerely hope I’ve had a good week too! But we don’t want to deprive you of your weekly questions, so I’m preparing these well in advance..
(Oh, and thanks to everyone who got in touch after last week’s Newsletter and for the appalling puns…)

First off the blocks this week is how to stop stain from bleeding or wicking along the grain of wood and colouring parts you don’t want it to. This is difficult to prevent as the stain is meant to soak in as far as it should, about the only way to reduce it (hopefully to the point of elimination) is to put a barrier of some sort in its way; about the best way of doing this is to seal the area you want to keep clean with a heavily diluted Cellulose Sanding Sealer, which will soak in further than normal and block the channels the stain is trying to travel along.

Another query was about spraying the Acrylic Gloss Lacquer, and how far away to hold the can from the item being sprayed. We suggest about 10-12 inches but this will vary depending on the size of the item and the ambient temperature. A warm day can cause the droplets in the spray to dry before they hit the intended surface. They’ll still adhere ok but won’t flow out, leaving a rough, almost pebble dashed, surface, so don’t be afraid to experiment a bit to find out what distance suits you best.

Still on Acrylic Gloss Lacquer we were asked for the best way to increase the shine. Burnishing Cream is excellent for this, it cuts back so finely that it brings up a brighter gloss every time. Very easy to do on the lathe but harder by hand on a flat surface, but it will still work. As long as the lacquer is dry you can also use very fine wet’n’dry, used wet, to achieve the same result.

And with that this week’s newsletter is over far too soon…which is probably what I’ll be saying about my holiday!
Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re having fun doing it and I’ll be back, in written form at least, next week.

Terry