Hi

Here I am again, this time with an apology. In last week’s Newsletter I mentioned about a 20% discount for clubs. Although I mentioned it in the text it perhaps wasn’t as clear as it should have been. This discount is for club shops, where the club buys a range of our finishes and displays and sells them at meetings. We have several clubs who do this with great success, especially in areas where they don’t have a local stockist. If your club doesn’t have a shop maybe this could be time to think about it.
Sadly, we can’t offer this discount to buying circles/group orders.
Shall we crack on with some questions?

Although this isn’t a question we get asked a lot I suspect it’s quite common. We were contacted by someone who has a number of finished items that need a bit of TLC to get them looking their best again. One option of course is our Buffing Wheel Kit, but that’s not suitable for everything, and what can be applied if you can’t remember (or never knew!) what was originally used to finish the item? Use the wrong thing and it could all fall off, or worse, ruin what is already there. It’s not easy to test finishes and doing so often goes along the lines of putting a solvent on the surface to see if it dissolves it – often spoiling it in the process. The best bet in a situation like this is to just use either WoodWax 22, or Microcrystalline Wax if you want something harder. Waxes are very forgiving, will stick to pretty much anything and won’t attack the finish below. These can be buffed up to a good shine, restoring your piece to its full glory.

One of our stockists in Norway asked us if Spirit Stain can be used on leather. It will certainly colour the leather and make a very good job of it too, but in the same way as when using it on timber it will need a coating of some type over the top to keep it in place. This is particularly important on leather as, for example, something like a stained belt could colour another garment it came into contact with – especially if it got wet. There are specific leather dyes available, apparently they too need to be fixed in.

Finally for this week, I was asked about the practice of keeping sanding sealer in a jar with a brush attached to the lid. The question really related to how to shake the jar without covering the brush at the same time?
It’s not possible of course, so the important thing here is to make sure that the sealer is properly mixed before putting it in the jar and to only put in a small amount at a time. It should then be easy enough to swirl around before use and make sure that the solids in the sealer are mixed in properly and thus allowed to do their job properly. And of course, if you intend to store the jar with the sealer in it, the jar should be properly marked and kept out of the reach of children.

That’s your lot for this week! Next Thursday sees me up at Cambridge Woodturners for a demo, so I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends there and hopefully making some new ones too.
I hope you have a good week and I’ll see you back here in seven days.

All the best

Terry