A mixed bag of questions this week, starting with one about spraying our products – how much should they be thinned down to allow them to be sprayed through an air gun? The answer here depends on which product. The Spirit Stain is thin enough to spray straight from the bottle, no thinners are required unless you want to alter the colour.
Most of the other products, though, such as sealers and lacquers, will require the addition of about 10% thinners to allow them to be applied by spray. The type of spraying system, and cap and nozzle size, can have an effect as well, but in most cases 10% should be enough, and will certainly be a good place to start.

Someone queried whether our Spirit Stain contains shellac – one website says that it does. This used to be the case, the shellac acted as a binder to keep the pigment held in solution. Different methods mean that this is no longer necessary, as the product has evolved in the last forty years; sometimes to improve the product, or to try to maintain the price level, or, more often than not, because a certain raw material has been discontinued, and a suitable replacement has had to be found. Most of the changes have been minimal, though, and we’re confident that the products are still as good as they’ve ever been!

Finally, for this week… some time ago I mentioned strange uses for our products, which prompted regular correspondent Rowland P to get in touch with his experience…
A small workshop accident required a plaster to control the blood. By the end of the day, the plaster needed changing, but removing left behind the inevitable sticky residue. Scrubbing the area was likely to re-open the wound, so a fresh plaster was applied over the residue, and over the next couple of days this was repeated several times.
Rowland returned to the workshop and was applying our Microcrystalline Wax to a bowl. He says ‘This was applied as usual with NyWeb orange pad. After about a minute the stubborn Elastoplast started to fall off leaving pristine fingers behind with hardly a trace of goo.  Brilliant.  If the NHS ever get to hear about this, just think what it will do to your sales figures!  Chestnut Microcrystalline Wax is now an addition to my first aid kit!’
We hesitate to make any such claims or recommendations ourselves, but we know we certainly have one convert!
(Rowland added that his injury is coming along well now, which is good news)

And that’s everything for this week. I’d like to thank Stewart Furini again for deputising for us in Austria last weekend, and for the team at Neureiter for looking after him so well. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.

I hope you’re looking forward to the weekend and have some nice plans for it. If it includes some woodturning, you can always share them on our Facebook group Conkers if you feel so inclined.

I’ll see you back here in seven days

Terry