Projects, projects.

[rebeccmeister]

The first coat of stain looked okay.



The second coat of stain looked much better.

And everything looked even better than that after the first round of polyurethane:



Two more coats to go. One of my least favorite steps when refinishing furniture is cleaning off the dust after sanding. If any of you know of any brilliant magic tricks for making that step less annoying, let me know.

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Completely unrelated, but today I remembered something I wanted to post about when I was blogging about gardening the other day. While I was transplanting the latest set of lettuce plants, I discovered a fruit sticker in the bag of organic potting soil that I'd purchased.

...and now that I think about it, the PLU on the sticker was for a piece of non-organic produce; organic produce PLUs are preceded by the number "9."

Since I didn't remember to blog about that, I decided to take a photo of a different project, instead. This is a project that I originally started to humor my dad. Since he's dead now, I can only say I'm pretty sure he would have been equally appreciative of this being a project to honor him. This has continued to be a fruit sticker repository for longer than I would have liked. Oh well.

Comments

[thisnewday]

"If any of you know of..." Your table looks REALLY good! The only thing I know of, to help with the dust between coats of poly, is to use what's called a tack cloth. You likely already know this, but they're sold in packs of two or three at Lowe's and Home Depot and their stickiness picks up the dust with a light wipe across the surface. Again, nice job!

[rebeccmeister]

Thank you!! You know, I should look for tack cloths. I had a feeling there was a simple solution but didn't know quite what to look for. So thank you for that as well.

I should be sure to note: the table itself was purchased as one of those "finish-it-yourself" projects, although I did add on the footrest. I could only dream of being a good enough woodworker to make a table like this by hand. And I just have too many hobbies to get too far into woodworking. :^)

[jameswatriss]

One more vote for tack cloth.

It’s nothing more than gauze that’s impregnated with beeswax. Beeswax is sticky, unlike paraffin, so it pulls up all the dust, but doesn’t contaminate the surface.

I feel your pain re: the fumes. One more plug for Anarchist’s design book. While it’s not an exhaustive list, he does share a number of non-toxic ways to finish things, including danish soap finishing. (Yes. Soap. As a finish.)

There are plenty of cool ways to finish furniture that are fun, and clean. Google Shou Sugi Ban if you want another example.

[rebeccmeister]

Yay! Thanks for the explanation on tack cloth. That is cool.

I have the polyurethane on hand for the current projects, plus a big box fan in the window on the front porch for ventilation. But I've heard of soap finishing! Super cool stuff.

I bet there are a lot of fun things to explore in that realm and I am already picturing the geeky conversations with scrottie about them. He has been learning a ton about these areas of fabrication as a result of getting into sailing, and we've also been watching YouBoob videos made by Leo Sampson as he restores the wooden sailing vessel the Tally Ho. If you haven't encountered Leo's videos already I highly recommend them for the entertainment value.

[thisnewday]

"I could only dream of being a good enough woodworker..." LOL, same here. That's why I usually refer to myself as a woodbutcher. Not very original, I know, but that's another reason why it suits me...