WEEK COMMENCING 4 MAY 2025

Hi

I’m back! Thanks to Melissa and Nathanael for looking after the Newsletter while I was away on holiday (in The Gambia, a very enjoyable break and a great experience).

I hope everything is well with you, and you’ve been enjoying some good weather and getting out into the workshop.

Here’s an interesting question that came in before my holiday. A customer was working on a design for a sharer board made from British oak. The boards could have hot butter, melted cheese and salsa spilled on them. Did we have any suggestions for a finish on them?

The food itself would be in bowls, so the finish needs to be food resistant, not food safe. We reckon the best bet on this would be the Hard Wax Oil; very tough, easy to apply and will stand up to a lot of abuse.

Importantly, it’s not indestructible, and the foodstuffs mentioned are unknowns, so we suggested extensive testing before going ahead with a production run.

We were not assured this would happen, but that the results would be shared. I’ll keep you posted!

Still dipping deep into my postbag, we were asked what to do about buffing a finish on a burr. The Buffing Wheel system would be liable to leave fibres behind, as they would catch in the roughness of the burr (and this could potentially be dangerous as well).

This sounds like a job for our Polishing Brushes. These are really designed for polishing waxes, but they double up very nicely for use buffing other finishes too. The fibres on them seem quite hard, but they’re just the right side of flexible to adapt to the shape of the item being buffed, and the right side of firm enough to actually burnish the surface.

Like the Buffing System, these are a bit of an investment as they’re not cheap, but they last a very long time and are a very useful tool to have in your workshop.

Finally, a question about the Newsletter itself. Much as I’d like to say I personalise every Newsletter individually, putting your name in the first line, I’m sure you already realise it’s a mail merge program.

So why, someone asked, does their Newsletter start ‘Hi [Reader’s Surname]’ rather than addressing them by their first name?

This is because the nametag was set up incorrectly, which happens more often than you’d think. (It might be because the First Name and Surname fields have been transposed on our website. Ooops!)

If we’re not using your correct name, or the wrong version of it (are you ‘Ben’ and not ‘Benjamin’?), just let me know, and we’ll get this changed for you.
Having suffered many times with people getting my name wrong, I’d hate to think I was getting yours wrong!

The Weird and Wonderful Show has come around again (already!), and takes place this weekend at Haughley Park in Suffolk. Always interesting, always fun, I’ll be going along on Saturday, purely as a visitor—and to heckle Melissa, as she’ll be working on the West Suffolk Woodturners stall in the afternoon.

If you see me there, do come and say hello!

All the best

Terry