Hi

How’s your week been? Been up to much? I hope you’ve found some time for some woodworking. No news to tell you about at the moment, for some reason I don’t have any shows or demos in the immediate future although I won’t be sitting at home every night as I seem to have rather a lot of music gigs to go to. Looking forward to them! Shall we answer some questions?

You might have read that we’re about to introduce a ‘Reducer’ to be used with our Iridescent and Metallic Paints. A Reducer’s main purpose is to act as a sort of thinner, to make the paints less viscose and thus able to be sprayed, especially with an airbrush. We were asked what’s the difference between this and a straightforward thinner. The answer is that the Reducer won’t affect the opacity or vibrancy of the paint, whereas a thinner would dilute this as well.
If you are an airbrush user you’ll be interested to know that we’re also bringing out an Airbrush Cleaner to keep your equipment in tip-top condition.

A question recently was about applying a lacquer to a softwood to make it harder. Finishes don’t really work that way, although they might be hard wearing in their own right the timber underneath will still be ‘soft’. That’s not normally a problem, unless the item in question is going to be subject to some hard knocks. If hit hard enough, a dent could be created in the timber but the lacquer, being harder, could crack. This wouldn’t look good, could eventually lead to more de-lamination of the lacquer and can be difficult to repair.
If you expect the item you are making will be subject to a lot of hard knocks, then an oil is a better choice as this is more flexible and will move with the wood rather than crack. For the same reason, an oil finish is better for wet wood.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned about using a Liming Brush and this created a follow up question asking if the Liming Brush could be used to create a grain when one isn’t really present in the timber. Not really I’m afraid. The brushes are great when used on ash and oak as these have a fairly open grain already for the brush to work on and they will pick out the soft open grain so that it accepts more of the Liming Wax (or Gilt Cream). If there’s no open grain to work on it’s not so effective. It will, to a point, exaggerate the  grain pattern but it can only work with what is available. The best option is to go with a timber that is open grained already.

If you were paying attention last week you’ll know that I’m on holiday this week, grabbing some last minute sunshine in Portugal. I hope the week has been kind to you as well, I’ll be back in the office on Monday, raring to go. Although where I’ll be raring to go to, I’m not sure yet!

See you back here next week

All the best

Terry