Hi

Welcome to the last Newsletter for 2019, it’s taking its annual break now until early January. I hope that those of you who rely on it to announce the start of the weekend will manage!
Two quick things to tell you about. As predicted, the UK delivery system seems to be in meltdown already. I’m spending a lot of my time chasing deliveries that we’ve sent out, or stuff that we’re expecting. So if you want to order something for Christmas please, please, please do it now. If someone wants to get you something but you don’t know what, we also now have Gift Cards available on our website which are sent by email, so you can order right up to Christmas Eve – or even on the day!
And if someone is really struggling for ideas, tickets for our Woodturning Weekender make a great present and don’t take up much room!

Last week’s ‘Solvent Chart’ was very popular, and it spawned a question of its own. In the preamble I mentioned the Compatibility Chart and a number of people emailed to ask where it can be obtained from.
We do sell an A2 laminated version, very high quality; but you can also download an A4 version for free HERE. And for future reference, to save you searching through emails later, that link can also be found on the front page of our website. If you don’t have a copy of the chart it’s well worth downloading.

And compatibility sort of leads me to the next question; someone rang in to ask why their stains weren’t staying on the piece of wood they were working on. Could it be because they’d used a ‘certain product’ on the wood first? Yep, got it in one.
I say ‘certain product’ because it wasn’t one of ours, not that the outcome would have been much different. But this leads me to a plea. Please, think about the products you are using, and more importantly, whether you need to use them, especially when considering what you want to put on top of them. I try to avoid watching too many YouTube videos, far too often the ‘finishing’ part sets my blood pressure off. There are some products that are over-used on YouTube and some viewers think that they must use them on everything they make. And that’s really not the case. Often they do very little to improve the finish and sometimes are storing up problems for the future. So I’m not saying to never use them, just don’t think they should be used EVERY time.

And finally this week, a quick question about our Buffing Tree – that’s the buffing system with three 6 inch wheels mounted on one spindle.
We’ve been asked a couple of times whether the wheels can be replaced. The answer is, sadly, no. The Buffing Tree isn’t designed to come apart for safety reasons, so it’s not possible to replace the wheels. This also prevents the wrong size wheels being put on which could put the central spindle under too much pressure.

And that’s it for this year. Thank you, all my loyal Chestnuteers for sticking with us, reading this every week and for all of your kind comments during the year about the Newsletter.
If you have a friend who doesn’t get the Newsletter but you think they should, please tell them about it. They can subscribe at the bottom of any page on our website. We’re very close to a ‘special number’ of subscribers and it’d be great to get there – think of it as a Christmas present to me.

The Newsletter will be back early in January, until then, I wish you, and those dear to you, the very best for Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Have a good one!

Terry