We’ll start with a simple question sent in by email from France this week. We were asked if our Tung Oil is a pure oil or if it contains any solvents or other additives. The answer is that our Tung Oil is completely natural, with nothing added or taken away – which is great if you’re looking for a hard-wearing solvent free finish, but there is a trade-off here, Tung Oil can be very slow drying, taking days or even weeks if applied too thickly. Your patience will be rewarded with a lovely finish though!

A caller this week wanted to refurbish the inside of her boat but without, understandably, having to strip the whole lot back to bare wood. Some of the existing timber was looking faded and the previous coating had worn through in places and there’s no easy answer to this one. The finish needs to be water resistant, preferably tinted to mask the faded areas and compatible with the unknown finish originally used. In the end we suggested an old-fashioned oil based varnish, possibly even a yacht varnish, with some of our Spirit Stain mixed in to tint it. Spirit Stain will colour varnishes, Acrylic Lacquers, Cellulose Sanding Sealer and Melamine Lacquer – worth knowing if you need a tinted finish.

Another correspondent enquired about an acrylic lacquer that would be very water resistant. We suggested the Acrylic Gloss Lacquer aerosol but he wasn’t keen on spraying and asked if the contents could be collected and applied with a brush. We’ve never tried it but we reckon it’d be very difficult – but probably not impossible on small items. The resins in the acrylic aerosols are very quick drying, hard wearing and very water resistant but don’t lend themselves to a brush application although they are ideal for an aerosol. Sorry!

This one was a bit sad; a caller had been refurbishing her table; she’d sanded back the legs and top and coated them with Cellulose Sanding Sealer and Melamine Lacquer and was very pleased with the results. She then wanted to put another coat on the top and thought that thinning it would help. She was right…but sadly the only thinners she had was White Spirit and this isn’t compatible with cellulose based products. The product went gloopy (that IS a technical term!) and spoiled the top. The only suggestion we could make was to get some Cellulose Thinners and use this to scrape the contaminated lacquer off, followed by more sanding to make sure as much is removed as possible. We think it was this lady’s first venture into woodwork and we really felt for her.

And finally this week, a follow up to a question asked at a recent club demo. I’ll just reproduce the email here which should tell the full story:
‘Hi Terry, I spoke to you at the club meeting last Monday (3rd) regarding the poor finish I had on my oak worktop after having applied 5 coats of finishing oil. You suggested I do a wet sand, which I did using the Orange NyWeb Pad, followed by a second wet sand 24 Hrs later and I’m pleased to say it worked ! Very happy with the finish now, so big thank you for your help.’

I hope you’ve managed to pick something up from this week’s newsletter, we’ll be back in 7 days, have a great week till then!