Hi

I’m back! But I’m not sure I was missed, judging by the amount of fan mail Mel got last week when she took over the Newsletter. But it does show what a friendly (or is it fickle? lol) lot you are. I’m just pleased I wasn’t here to witness just quite how pleased she was with herself!
But on a serious note, thanks to the brilliant team here, Mel, Mary and Paul for looking after things so well, giving me a chance to have a proper break. And thanks to everyone who wished me well on that too.
It’s question time!

I was asked if the correct sequence was ‘sealer, then oil’, or ‘oil, then sealer’. That’s easy – neither is correct! Using both of them is wasteful and could potentially ruin the look of the piece being made.
An oil needs to soak in to start forming a bond with the timber. If the surface is sealed first, this cannot happen. This could lead to adhesion problems further down the line. So using a sealer first is not good practice.
Oils also do not like other coating used on top of them. Waxes are ok, or more of the original oil, but they will resist a sealer or lacquer, and could again cause adhesion problems later.
And, of course, they are both trying to do much the same job. The sealer does what its name suggests, preparing the surface for the next coat (wax, lacquer etc). An oil seals the wood, making it ready for more oil or a wax.

We introduced our Buffing Tree a few years ago – that’s the one with all three wheels on one spindle. We were asked if we supplied an adaptor to convert the original, three wheel system into the tree. Sadly, the answer is no. We did look into this, but couldn’t find a way to make this work.
The ‘face’ of the wheels (the side without the protruding fixing bolt) is as flat as we can make it. (This is for safety, and also to prevent any risk of scratching the item being buffed.) This means there is nothing to affix a spindle to.
Plus, the indvidual wheels are larger (8 inch) than the ones on the tree (which are six inch). Using bigger wheels would have meant extra machining to make the spindle thicker and stronger, and would probably wipe out most, if not all, of the saving made by using the original wheels.

Finally for this week, I was asked about the best way to remove the white bloom that can occur when using the Acclerator to speed the drying time of CA Superglues. I’m not really sure of the answer to this; DeBonder might help, or it’s a case of sanding the offending bloom away. The best answer is to avoid it in first place, which is surprisingly easy to do – just don’t use so much of the Accelerator! Only a small amount is needed to do the job. It might be that you’re working on something small and it’s hard to limit how much is sprayed – in which case, spray from further away, so less of the Accelerator lands on the glue. An alternative would be to spray into the air, and pass the item through the mist.

And that’s it for this week! Don’t forget, we’ve got another episode of our Conkers LIVE series coming up on Wednesday, this time featuring a demo from our good friend Ronald Kanne in the Netherlands. Two big shows from the Netherlands in the space of two weeks! Let’s hope this one goes better for the UK! You can join us using this link: https://youtu.be/9wM0oGpRKRU.
Show starts at 7.15pm UK time.
I hope we’ll see you there.

And, of course, I’ll be back in a week’s time. Have a good one!

Terry