Hello again

What a busy day at the ToolPost last Saturday – great to see so many people there, I just wish I’d made a note of some of the questions I was asked, but there just wasn’t enough time. I couldn’t be there on the Sunday so sorry if I missed you.
Let’s get to the questions…

We’ve had  a couple of instances recently of people wanting to use our Gilt Creams as a paint, to highlight just certain areas of their work. What to thin them with to make them brushable? we were asked. The answer is simple, white spirit is the correct solvent, just take care to make sure that if you’re putting another coating on top it will take a while for the ‘paint’ to dry.

Here’s one I hadn’t considered until asked at a show recently. I’m always banging on about not thinning Cellulose Sanding Sealer – then why, I was asked, do we sell Cellulose Thinners? It’s a fair question, but as regular readers will know there are times when it’s ok to thin the sanding sealer, usually when stabilising ‘punky’ timber. And of course, every time you take the lid off the can of sealer some of the solvent in there evaporates, and if you accidentally leave the lid off for a length of time a lot will be lost, so in those cases you need to be able to add thinners, not to make it thinner but to return it to its original consistency.

I’ve just had this one come in by phone from a woodturner who uses our finishes for all of his work. He’s just been given an antique clock that needs some restoration work and wanted to know if it would be ok to use our finishes on non-turned work – and of course it is! It’s important to pick the product to match the project, but our finishes can be used on any type of woodworking, from turning to carving to marquetry to carpentry to…well anything else you can think of.

That’s it for this week, if you’re coming up to Harrogate be sure to fight your way through the crowds and say hello, we’ve got Gary Lowe demonstrating with us this year and we’re looking forward to working with him again.
Gary is also one of the featured demonstrators at the Woodturning Weekender next year, tickets for which are selling quickly, so don’t leave it too late – and of course, they make a great Christmas present too!

I’ll be here in print next week, my body will be in Harrogate, quite where my brain will be by Sunday evening is another matter!

Take care

Terry