Hi

How are you this week? I hope you’ve had a good one, if all has gone according to plan I’ll be sitting in the sun somewhere (Turkey actually) with a cold drink. Not necessarily alcoholic you understand, I’ll just be relaxing and taking it easy. Well, fairly easy, I do have a holiday project in mind which I’ll tell you more about when I get back – assuming I get to do any of it. It won’t be taking priority.
As I mentioned last week, I didn’t want to break the sequence so for the next two weeks I’ll be re-posting some questions from the dim and distant past of the Newsletter when we had less that a hundred subscribers..

Here’s the first one, in fact the very first question we featured…
We were contacted by someone refinishing the handle on a hand plane; he had our Cellulose Sanding Sealer, Acrylic Lacquer and Friction Polish and wanted to know if these would be suitable.
Whilst it’s always better to keep to the same solvent base where possible (in this case by using the Acrylic Sanding Sealer) not everyone realises that you can put Acrylic Lacquer over Cellulose Sanding Sealer, they are designed to be compatible so our caller was in luck here. It’s also ok to put Friction Polish on top of the Acrylic Lacquer (or any of the other lacquers) and it will give a deeper, brighter shine, especially when used with the Burnishing Cream. However, the Friction Polish isn’t what we’d consider to be a hardwearing coating and it will wear off in a relatively short period of time, exposing the Acrylic Lacquer beneath – which is more that ample as a finish for this project.

I’m going to stay with our first ever Newsletter for the next two questions as well…
Lots of people use our products on jewellery and we had an enquiry this week about staining and finishing pieces; the caller was using Food Safe Finish to reduce the chance of a reaction by the wearer, but not unexpectedly the stain was coming off instead. Spirit Stain needs to be sealed into the wood, whatever the item being made is. Options include the higher-building oils or waxes but in this case we suggested Acrylic Gloss Lacquer. It’s very tough and will stand up to most things, bright enough to make the colours of the stain really pop and being toy safe it shouldn’t cause any discomfort to the wearer. And of course it’s easy to apply and won’t lift the stain.

And finally, someone contacted us who was having trouble with disposable gloves. He was using cheap latex ones which aren’t known for their solvent resistance. We prefer (and even sell) Vinyl Gloves. They still don’t last forever but they’re easier to re-use and won’t immediately fall apart when using any of our products.

And there you have it for this week, that was quite easy! I’m going to carry on taking it easy, I hope you will too and I’ll be back in your inbox same time next week.

All the best

Terry