A couple of questions about Spirit Stain to start with this week.
The first one is slightly light hearted but worthy of using here; a caller complimented us on how wonderful our Spirit Stains are but mentioned that the caps are difficult to get off!
We’d have to agree, but there’s a reason for that. Out of all of our range the Spirit Stain is the only one that ever leaks out of the bottles. Most of the caps are put on ‘finger tight’ and this is sufficient to keep the liquid where we put it.
The Spirit Stain is so thin that, even with the transit bungs in place, the stain splashes on the inside of the lid and worms its way down the thread of the neck and then all over the bottle. If you’ve ever knocked a bottle over you’ll know how little it takes to make an awful mess! So, we mechanically tighten all of the bottles before they leave us to prevent leaks. Now you know!

The next question was about whether to apply Spirit Stain before or after sanding sealer. The official answer is to do it before, so that the stain can be absorbed into the timber.  We’ve become aware of a growing trend to do it the other way round which is usually for a purely decorative effect, to get a more ‘splodgey’ look, which also works.

I’m going to sneak one more Spirit Stain question in, about using Ebonising Lacquer over Black Spirit Stain. This is quite acceptable but you might wonder why! The answer is that in the unlikely event that the lacquer gets chipped (people can be heavy handed) any bare wood that shows will still be black and won’t be so visually obvious.

A slightly more serious and specialist question now, about whether our Melamine Lacquer gives off formaldehyde whilst drying.
We’re reproducing our answer here because we want our customers to be in full possession of the facts about our products and not to be scared by rumours and exaggerations.
The answer is that yes, all ‘curing’ products emit formaldehyde whilst curing (about 3-4 weeks for Melamine Lacquer).
Tests have shown that the amount produced is significantly less than half of the limit set by the World Health Organisation and poses no threat at all. Melamine Lacquer is used in workshops and factories around the world with no problems whatsover,

Our last question this week is a bit cheeky on our part…a reader asked if they could use some of our Q&As in their club newsletter. We take this as a huge compliment and are more than happy for this to happen, thank you. All we ask in return is a credit for the information.

And that’s it for this week folks; I’m struggling with a slightly different way of writing this this week, I’m not sure if you can tell, but hopefully I’ll get used to it soon!

Take care

Terry