Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Dings and Things


Last week, Frank Sharpe was in the shop with me making a continuous arm. Here he is cutting v notches with the skew. I'll be covering more in the skew video series soon. Below is the spindle deck of Franks chair. The soft white pine dings and dents very easily and often despite all best attempts to protect it. It would seem that planing to the bottom of the dings or "sanding them out" would be the solution. But it's just the beginning of the problem!



Here is a short photo series showing the issue. Especially when using water based milk paint, the dings can come back to haunt you when you think you've planed them out. What happens is that the fibers compress and later pop back out when the water soaks in.

Here, I've made an intentional ding in some pine.


Then, I planed to the lowest level of the indentation (or close to it, for visual sake)

Next, I steamed the ding out with a wet paper towel and an iron.

And here is the ding now sitting proud of the surface. To avoid this little surprise after painting, the steps shown must be switched around a bit. Steam the surface first to raise the dings back to the level of the surrounding areas and then plane them out. This way they won't find their second life after the painting is done!


Here is Frank with his finished chair, obviously happy to have those dings out!


And what would a posting be without a shot of the Chair Notes Covergirl with Mikey the goat. They love their afternoon hikes (they start wailing and screaming around 3 o'clock) and they love to eat pine needles.


2 comments:

  1. My sheep used to blaat like crazy when I came home from work. Since we lived right across the street from the village store, the front porch rocking chair gang used to have a series of snide comments about "Greg's girls". Every joke was hilarious, every day.

    In reality what they wanted was their grain. I'd fill up the trough in the shed and open the pasture gate- they'd B-line into their night pen. My "girls" would follow me through Hades- for a couple mouths full of grain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Greg,
    you said it, I have no illusions about the power of grain. We usually let them pick at the pasture for a while and then go for a walk which always ends with a helping of grain back in the paddock. As much as for them, it's become a nice end of the day ritual for us and the dogs, the only difference is that we don't wail if we miss it!

    ReplyDelete