Past Newsletter Articles
Furniture Cleaning & Care April 2008
Wooden furniture is covered with a variety of finishes that protect the wood's surface from moisture and abrasions. The finish is a barrier that protects the wood while at the same time showing off the beauty of the wood's surface. It's surprisingly simple to protect and enhance the wood's natural beauty. All that's needed is alittle TLC for your furniture to last a lifetime.
The idea is to regularly clean and polish your furniture to both keep the furniture free from dust, liquids, and food while at the same time enhancing its beauty. Today's cleaner's often serve a dual purpose of both cleaning and polishing furniture. These products fall into several categories: those containing blends of water and oil packaged in cans and sprays, those with oils or petroleum distillates with a citrus smell, hard or soft waxes, and warm water with a bit of dish washing detergent.
Furniture oils will temporarily enhance the finish an appearance, but can contribute to the degradation of the finish over time as oils leave a residue that attracts dust and dirt build up. A thin coat of wax on the other hand both protects the finish with a hard polished surface and acts as a barrier against moisture. Great polishes are Oz Polish and Penthouse Polish. If you can�t find them, send me a note or give me a call.
Why Repair August 2008
Repairing furniture can be a challenge. Seemingly rooted in alchemy and artisan's guilds, it involves both the restoration of furniture's structure and its finishes.
Structural repairs often involve wobbly/broken chair legs and arms, cracked or split edging on shelves and table tops and misaligned parts due to prior repairs that have gone array. Sometimes the furniture part is so misaligned that new parts need to be manufactured.
Finishes can be simple fixes by adding soft resins and fillers accompanied by top coats of lacquer or polyurethanes. Modern furniture's use of polymers and catalyzed lacquers make repairs fairly straight forward while furniture made during the past 100 years creates problems not only with the finish but the furniture polish that was used over all those years. Older furniture polishes contained silicone that can wreak havoc on a new coat of lacquer, especially if it has had time to seep through microscopic cracks in the finish down into the wood itself.
Which Glue Should I Use? April 2009
We all rely on glue to make, repair or restore furniture or something of value. But which one to use is the question. There are so many choices that I thought it might make sense to review some of the pros and cons of the most popular types.
- PVA or polyvinyl acetate is yellow glue that we know as Elmer's Carpenter or Titebond II and III. The glue is water soluble, works great, is fast bonding and gap filling and really has no weaknesses other than the objects being glued need to be clamped together.
- Polyurethane is marketed under the name Gorilla Glue. One side of an object being glued most be sprayed with water for the glue to begin working. The glue is strong, has about 20 minutes of 'open time' and dries to the touch in 3 hours and rock hard in 12 hours.
- Epoxy is a two part compound that has both a resin and a hardener. These compounds are marketed as System Three or The West System. They are primarily used for the marine industry or hard to glue woods like Teak or Coco Bolo.
- CA or Cyanoacrylate glue is best known as Super or Krazy Glue. It's mostly used to glue non-porous materials or those needing instant adhesion.
Interesting Projects August 2009
One of the more interesting projects I've been working on came from a home improvement contractor that specializes in older houses. He was having a problem determining what stains to use to match a 50 year old Chestnut Stain. Fifty years ago, stain manufacturers didn't have the strict standards relating to Volatile Organic Compounds [VOCs] that we have today. By the same token, modern stains can still be customized to match older stains. This is what I was able to do for the contractor by making a solution using Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna.
For another customer I had a huge surprise when I removed multiple layers of old black/brown goop from a platform rocker. Under all the old paint/stain/shellac mixture was a beautiful walnut veneer on both the rocker's head piece and the chair's arm supports. I even found a date stamped on the back of the chair. The date was 1873. I knew the rocker was old as it had only one spring on each side of the platform but I had no idea that it was 136 years old.
On a personal note, I finished building a sailing canoe which is pictured in the upper right hand corner. The 14.5 foot canoe is made from cypress, mahogany and walnut and carries a 34 sq. ft sail. Sailing canoes were popular during the 1920's and 1930's for summer recreation.
Protect your investment and don't spend a fortune replacing your valuable furniture.
Call Kerr Wood Works today. Call (410) 877-1934