{"id":132,"date":"2004-09-26T21:14:05","date_gmt":"2004-09-26T11:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=132"},"modified":"2006-01-27T21:14:22","modified_gmt":"2006-01-27T11:14:22","slug":"wood-finishing-a-new-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"wood finishing – a new technique"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read about a great finishing technique in Fine Woodworking magazine<\/a> – it involved treating the varnish as though it were French polish. Now I’ve never been really great at applying smooth finishes – I usually wind up rushing things and putting on too thick a layer of polyurathane varnish and then trying to sand back runs and making a general mess of things. <\/p>\n

This week a friend came over bearing an unfinished wooden box, and asking very very nicely if I could just make a small lid insert and slap on a coat of varnish. Obviously she had never seen any of my finished work or she might have looked elsewhere. <\/p>\n

I did have some 3mm MDF for the insert and was able to cut it accurately but the finish was the daunting part. Now, I have in the past been able to get a slight french accent on my polish, if not actually achieve the essence of french polish. <\/p>\n

Enter Fine Woodworking… the box was assembled, but as yet had no hinges or catches – a good thing – but it was just in roughly dressed timber and still had quite a rough surface. So I set to work with 300 grit sandpaper on my triton orbital sanding attachment, and gave all six surfaces a bit of a going over, then went to a couple of finer grades up to 1500 grit until the surface felt like talc. Then making sure all my brushes were locked away, I cut up some chux superwipes into thirds and folded them over to make a pad, and using a small amount of Wattyl Estapol Gloss I rubbed the gloss varnish into the timber as though it were shellac dissolved in spirit – and voila! one of the best smoothest finishes I have achieved so far!
\nWooden box<\/p>\n

I reckon the box should be finished and assembled by about Wednesday – more then!<\/p>\n

Addendum: And here is the completed box
\nCompleted box<\/p>\n

The embroidery is by Annie Whitsed<\/p>\n

Cheers
\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read about a great finishing technique in Fine Woodworking magazine – it involved treating the varnish as though it were French polish. Now I’ve never been really great at applying smooth finishes – I usually wind up rushing things and putting on too thick a layer of polyurathane varnish and then trying to sand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-woodwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}