I had an interesting question last week… If you treat a piece of wood for woodworm, what finish can be used on the finished project that won’t be affected by any previous chemicals from the woodworm treatment.

As far as I can tell, It’s very difficult to confirm a chemical woodworm treatment has been 100% effective, as the treatment won’t necessarily make it to every hole in the wood where the bugs may be hiding.  During my research I came across an interesting method where the wood is heated to 60° Celsius, then is held there for an extended period of time until the centre of the wood is up to temperature, killing any woodworm in the wood, as it can’t survive at 60° (fun fact: this is the same process used to heat treat shipping pallets!). If you use this method, you have complete freedom with choice of finish, as there have been no chemicals used on the wood previously.

If you do decide to use a chemical treatment on the wood, before using any finish, it’s best to leave the wood for a few weeks for as much of the woodworm killer to leave the wood as possible.  You would then want to choose a finish that completely seals in the wood, like a lacquer, so there would be a very low chance of any remaining chemicals getting through the finish.  I wouldn’t recommend trying to achieve something that is food safe, as even though the finish itself might be food safe, any remaining chemicals in the wood could be harmful if they leach out through the finish.

I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this topic, as it isn’t really something I’ve run into in the past.

On Wednesday, we had a phone call from a customer who has a solid Oak table that he was refinishing to go in his caravan. He had used Cellulose Sanding Sealer and Acrylic Gloss Lacquer, but the finish was dull in patches and didn’t look like it should have. After asking a few questions, I found out that he had applied 3 coats of sanding sealer before the lacquer. This is more than likely what was causing the problem, as sanding sealer is designed to only have one coat. If multiple coats of a sealer are used, it can be very slightly soft and when a top coat is applied (especially a lacquer) it can cause issues like the finish cracking or going dull. Although it isn’t ideal, the best option in this case would be to sand the table back to the bare wood and use something like our Hard Wax Oil, which will be easy to apply and give lots of protection.

We had a bit of a surprise this week when we received an email from our shipping company letting us know that one of our parcels has arrived at Heathrow and is ready to go on a plane! This is very rare for us, as it is normally astronomically expensive to ship hazardous goods by air (which most of our products are). Upon further inspection, this parcel was going to one of our European stockists and contained no hazardous products, meaning the shipping company had taken it upon themselves to send the parcel via air!