Newsletter
December 21 2002

Well, things seem to be normal around our house again, whatever that may be. I've been well pampered and soaked up every minute of it. Even the cat, who weighs in at 20 pounds and likes to challenge me periodically for dominant male status has been nice to me. Actually we're very close friends. He laid on top of my monitor where it's nice and warm until he got so big he wouldn't fit and hung over to the point that I couldn't see the screen. Now in the evenings he lays on the back of my chair and drapes over my shoulders with his nose close to my ear purring softly. Nice and warm on a cold winter evening in eastern Washington state.

The Internet knows no boundries, one second we can be in the sunny south seas and another in the snowy reaches of the frozen north. This newsletter goes to several different countries and, I'm sure to people of many different religions. To all who celebrate the Christmas season I hope you have a very joyous time.

To all, since time stands still for no man, or woman, and we all seem to get a little older with every tick of the clock, even those who use different calendars, a happy New Year.

Link Changes Reversed

We're back to using plain links again, because those programs that are used to catch unrequested email don't like the use of other than normal colored text. I can't even use the usual words to describe what I'm talking about because those programs don't like the descriptive words for what they do and the newsletter could end up in the dead letter file if I use them.

Some links will lead to an item for sale, but may have some valuable descriptive information. The items I link to are for your convenience and once in a while there'll be an out-and-out ad that hopefully will be something that someone will be interested in which will help pay for the web site and newsletter.

While we're on this type of subject, if you receive unwanted email from refinishfurniture.com or tomsvariety.com, it doesn't come from us and your email address didn't either. The only email we send out is the newsletter every two weeks, which is only sent to people who sign up for it and replies to email questions when we can. Very rarely (it hasn't happened yet) we'll send an informational email concerning the newsletter.

Quick tip

Salt is one of the worst foods to touch silver and tarnishes it quickly. Keep salt away from silver whenever possible, or wash salt residues away immediately after use.

Wax remover and cleaner

email question.....

Hello,

I just stripped an old oak sewing maching cabinet and then put a paste wax on it. I did nothing else to the piece. I'm not pleased with the way it looks so consequenty I'd like to take off the wax, stain the cabinet to even the color and then finish it with oil. How do I strip the wax off and ready the piece for stain?

Thanks,

Gus

reply.....

(links to products for sale)
Here is a good cleaner and wax remover I would go through the wax stripping procedure at least three times and probably a fourth for good measure. The cleaner manufacturer recommends using 0000 steel wool with the cleaner. I would use a medium bristle brush, like a vegetable brush too, to get the wax out of the pores of the oak. All traces of the wax need to come off so the stain will take properly.

Danish oil is easy to use and since it has a linseed oil base it's handy to use if there might be any little flecks of wax left. Danish oil has it's own color. You should apply at least 3 coats and each coat will make the finish a little darker, so you should start out a little lighter than you want the final result to be. Here is a good Danish oil.

Tung oil is another good finish and is a little harder than linseed oil. You would need to stain first for color. I would use a good oil stain. Oil stain takes longer to dry, but gives a better looking stain job than the quicky stains.

Tung oil comes in two types pure tung oil, which is not polymerized and polymerized tung oil, which is still pure tung oil when heat polymerized, but some tung oil is chemically polymerized, which will add chemicals to the tung oil. Polymerized tung oil dries harder and has a higher gloss than the non polymerized tung oil. Here are links to a good selection of stain and tung oil is available here chinawood oil Chinawood oil is another name for tung oil and I believe that the Chinawood deck oil shown is polymerized, the one on the lower part of the page is pure not polymerized.

The oils make a good finish and are easy to repair if they get scratched, just a quick buffing with 0000 steel wool and another coat of oil. I would stay away from polyurethane.

Quick tip

After you cut onions or garlic on your wood cutting board rub the surface well with a slice of lemon and rinse the cutting board.

Faux leather

First lets back you out of the garden path I led you down for a short distance last time. Not all of the paper needs to be torn on all four sides. It makes things a little easier if you leave four corner pieces with straight edges for use in the corners and a few pieces with one edge straight to use on the edges of your project.

I would suggest that you make your first project a piece of scrap wood or something else that isn't important, because it may take several tries before you get your technique down to your satisfaction and color combinations that are pleasing to you. If you don't have a piece of scrap wood large enough the side of a cardboard box would work nicely too. You should have a surface a couple of feet square to work with to get a good idea of overall appearance. If you use a cardboard box be sure that the box doesn't have any printing on it. If all the boxes you have are printed, cut a side out of one and use the inside, or if you need the box for storage, glue a layer of kraft paper over the printed surface.

If you're using a surface a couple of feet square you should tear your paper pieces a little smaller than I had recommended last time, so you can practice working with the soft edges and blending.

Now is a good time to choose your colors. Leather comes in all sorts of colors depending on the animal it comes from and the dyes the manufacturer uses. Take a look at some leather pieces. It's best if you have a magnifying glass to really study it closely and see how the colors are layered to make the overall appearance. The leather I'm studying right now is a top grain leather billfold. The leather is brown and graduates from a light brown to a medium brown. It appears that a good simulation could be made with a base coat and two glaze coats. You'll have to experiment to see if you would prefer to start with a light base coat, medium glaze coat and darker glaze coat, or the other way around.

One nice thing about Faux is that it is a totally inexact exactitude. Whatever suits your fancy is fair game. When you take a look at nature you'll see that two things that appear the same have little differences, the same as the faces of people, or snowflakes. If two bees sting you at the same time you may not be able to tell, or you don't really care at the time, but their stingers may be different lengths or diameters, or one may be a little crooked. The gist of this is that I can give you the basics of how to do faux, but you need to experiment and work out the details for your own taste and desire.

If you're wondering about glaze, it's a transparent or translucent color applied over something to give it a different appearance. You can use just about anything to make a glaze coat. Don't throw out the day old coffee, it can be used as a good glaze coat for a brown leather project.

I'd better stop a minute here to suggest that you use water base substances, rather than oil, because the water base products will dry much quicker than oil base will and you can do a lot more experimenting a lot more quickly. You can hurry water base drying, for experimenting, with a hair dryer or heat gun. It's best when you work on your final important project that you let everything dry without help. There's only a slight difference between the appearance of induced drying and drying on it's own, but it could produce a difference that you don't care for. Water base is a whole lot easier to clean up too.

Back to glazes. Artists acrylic colors are ideal for making water base glazes because there is such a large selection of colors and shades and mixing them together will give an infinite amount of glaze colors and shades to choose from.

The final product you need for your project is a clear acrylic finish for protection of the surface.

We're rapidly running out of room for this time, so I'll just list the other materials needed. You'll need wallpaper paste which is available at most paint stores or paint departments of larger stores. It can be purchased ready mixed or a dry powder. I'd suggest the dry powder, as it takes a very small amount to mix up a good size quantity of paste and the dry powder will last forever. You can use application utensils that you desire, paint brushes, bristle or foam, rollers or sponges. Sponges make real good tools for the application of the glazes.

Next year we'll gather all of this information together and start applying the stuff to make a very unique and pleasant appearing surface.

Tie dye dryer sheets

Nope, it doesn't have anything to do with furniture, but if you want to keep your kids occupied while you're working on a furniture project, save a bunch of used dryer sheets, then sit the kids down with a pile of used dryer sheets and a few cups of water with a few drops of different colors of food coloring and it should keep them busy for a while.

Quick tip

A cork makes a good drill bit stop for when you need to drill dowel holes or any other drilling. Drill a hole through the center of the cork with a bit a little smaller than the drill you plan to use it on, for a snug fit, then very carefully work the larger bit into the hole leaving the amount of bit showing for the depth of hole that you want.

Finishes, paints and stains

Lacquer

Lacquer has always been my favorite finish. It can be applied in heavy coats and it flows nicely and dries quickly to make a nice smooth finish. When you apply additional coats of most other finishes like varnish or polyurethane to itself each successive coat sits on top of the previous coat, but lacquer is solvent to itself and will dissolve the top layer of each previous coat and will end up as one very thick coat.

The first use of lacquer was in the Orient many centuries ago. The lacquer then was different than the lacquer as we know it now. The original lacquer had a base of resin taken from a type of Sumac tree.

The lacquer transition came about in the late 1800's. In the early 1800's chemists in Europe discovered that mixing cotton and nitric acid would make nitrocellulose, an explosive substance, but it was too unstable to be of much use. Later in the 1800's other chemists took the nitrocellulose and made smokeless powder and a much more stable product out of it. Somewhere along the way in the late 1800's someone discovered that nitrocellulose mixed with certain solvents dried to a hard film with a shine and lacquer as we know it today was born.

Lacquer in it's original form dries so quickly that it's necessary to apply it with spray equipment, but when extenders are added to lacquer it can be brushed on making it available for use by people who would like a good durable finish, but don't use lacquer enough to warrant buying spray equipment.

A lacquer finish is resistant to water and alcohol and other normally bad things for finishes, like milk and carbonated beverages when wiped up when they're spilled. Like other finishes lacquer will blush, get a white spot, if a hot moist object is set on it or something moist is left on it for long periods.

Cabinet Hardware

When you clean the hardware on your cabinets, especially antiques, be sure to leave some tarnish in designs so you can get the full effect of the hardware design. Antiques should only have hardware tarnish removed and polished in those areas of hardware where they would normally be shiney from constant use. Although oil from our hands will cause tarnish on the hardware, it will also help to shine those areas which are handled a lot.

You can find replacement hardware and new hardware here for your refinishing projects or if you would just like to refresh a piece of furniture with new hardware.

Quick Tip

When working with chemicals a paper or cloth dust mask won't do any good toward protecting your lungs. You need a resperator with filters rated for the type of chemical you're working with. Always wear a dust mask when you're sanding, they're good for the large sanding dust particles.