Hi

If you were at the Weekender, as well as having a fabulous time, you’ll have seen me make a very special announcement. Following his short stint with us a few weeks ago, we’ve invited our friend Nathanael Griffiths to come and do a six-month (paid, of course!) internship with us. Starting in mid-October, he’ll become part of the team here, getting to know and understand more about our products and the various hoops we have to jump through to comply with regulations. Who knows, he might even deputise for me with the Newsletter a few times; I’m sure his observations about working with us could be illuminating!
(And, if you or your club has booked Nathanael for training or a demo etc, don’t worry, all of his existing commitments will be honoured).

An interesting question came in this week from someone who has been asked to prepare a board for visitors at a wedding to sign as a commemorative piece. What could be used to seal it, and then applied to protect the signatures?

Cellulose Sanding Sealer should do the job of sealing the wood, to stop the ink from the pens bleeding, and Acrylic Gloss Lacquer should seal it and protect the text.
There are two important factors; being able to control what pens are used for signing, and testing it first. I’m confident this will work, but as it will be almost impossible to replace the board, it’s important to get it right the first time!

Another caller had used our Ebonising Lacquer on a pepper grinder, but it had gone sticky after a couple of years. Why was this, he wondered, and what was the remedy? It turned out that he’d applied Melamine Gloss Lacquer on top of the Ebonising Lacquer, and this could be the root of the problem. The melamine will soften the ebonising, but will dry quickly, leaving the user unaware of this. In time, and with repeated handling, the top surface can start to break down, exposing the partly-dry lacquer underneath. Enough time has passed that it’s no longer soft enough to come off, but it can still be sticky… and I suspect this is what has happened here.
The only remedy is to remove the lacquer and apply another coat. It can be left as a finish on its own, or Acrylic Gloss Lacquer (not the melamine) could be applied on top for extra protection.

On our website, and in our catalogue, we include small colour swatches of our stains and paints. This caused confusion for someone this week; these swatches are only to be used as guides. In the main, they are photographs of applied product, reproduced in printed form or displayed on a monitor. All of these different processes can alter the colours slightly. When you add in the fact that most of these products are translucent, and will pick up the colour of the wood beneath it, the end result is that there’s no way to accurately predict what the final colour will be. Which is one of the reasons we produce the Sample Kits, so you can try out the full range to see which colour (or, sometimes, which mix of colours), gives the desired result.

And that’s about everything from me for this week. I’ll be back next week, but I’ll be on holiday for a couple of weeks after that. It’s possible that the Newsletter could take a short break as well, so be warned, you’ll need to find something else to remind you that it’s Friday!

Cheers

Terry