Hi

Are you well? And did you see our Conkers LIVE demo last night featuring Chris Parker, AKA one half of the Bald Woodturners? It was a great demo, with some amazing work and techniques being shown. If you weren’t able to watch it live, for whatever reason, fear not, you can still watch it here: https://youtu.be/VT1teiaDgAU. It’s well worth a couple of hours of your time.
And now, on to the questions!

A question that came in this week was about sanding. As you might know, I think that preparation is one of the most important parts of finishing, and it’s important to get it right. Nobody likes sanding, well, not that I know of, but it can play a vital part in getting the surface of the timber as smooth as possible. The question asked how much pressure to apply, which is a difficult one to answer as it’s not really possible to measure this. Only a light pressure should be used, the abrasive should be fresh, and sharp, and require only the lightest touch to do its work. The main thing is, where possible, to maintain both a constant pressure and a constant contact, to ensure an even finish all over.

During Conkers LIVE someone asked about WoodWax 22 drying white in crevices, following a bad experience they’d had using it on a burr. This happens because the beeswax is bleached, and if it dries in concentration will dry white. There are a couple of ways to avoid this. If you’re doing a lot of burrs, it might be worth using one of the tinted versions of WoodWax 22, probably the Medium Brown. It won’t add a lot of colour to the wood, but it won’t dry white. The other option is to use a bristle brush to buff the wax, and to do the buffing straight after application, so that the surplus wax is still soft enough to be removed easily. It’s one of the reasons we sell brushes made for this!

Finally, this week, we were asked if our products are made in the UK. I think the most accurate answer to this is to say that as many of them as possible are – which is, in fact, the vast majority. Obviously, some of them use raw materials bought in from outside the UK, because some simply aren’t available domestically. Others, such as the Foam Brushes and AeroGuns for example, are imported from the USA, because that is where they originated and we don’t want to sell inferior imitations. And just occasionally we import from the Far East, but only components that are too expensive to buy in this country, usually because manufacturers don’t want to make them and price themselves out of the running.
I don’t think figures exist, but I think you’d be hard pushed to find another finishing company in the UK that buys from UK sources as much as we do.

And that’s where I will leave you, not only for this week, but also for next week as well, as I am having a week off. But don’t worry, your weekly reminder that it’s Friday will still arrive, along with some information about finishing. Melissa will be holding the fort in my absence, and will be sending out next Friday’s Newsletter. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll see you in two weeks’ time!

Terry