Take your time
Applying finish to a project is always the most satisfying and nerve wracking part of the job. On one hand you get to see your creation come to life. Finish adds luster, depth, and beauty to wood. There is some wood I never even knew had such beautiful figure until after the finishing process.
There are times when finishing does not produce the results we intend. The finish will show off the beauty, and the flaws. Every scratch, raised grain, tooling, and sanding marks. I know we’ve all had that one dent where you dropped the piece on accident and you thought it was okay only to find out later it sticks out like a sore thumb.
I’ve been talking about my planter boxes a lot and I use reclaimed wood for them. That look isn’t for everyone and often the client wants them stained. So I stained some using a dark stain and here’s the results. And that’s where the flaws came out. I usually either plane the wood or sand it. I had a lot to do so I sanded. I didn’t want to muck up a fairly new set of blades for this project. But I was in a time crunch and I used my belt sander to speed things up. It worked wonderfully but it was aggressive and tore up the grain. I knew it and I left it.
Torn grain really stands out after the water based stain raised the grain further.
We all reach this point on a project when we’ve spent many meticulous hours making sure everything fit perfectly, joinery was flawless, glue lines smooth, and we have a decision to make. Do we ignore the blemish and move on or do we fix it? Fixing it can mean taking off all the finish, resanding, and reapplying, so is it worth it to take 2 steps back? In many cases the decision comes down to who is it for. Is this for you or for someone else? If it’s for you, you make the decision whether you can live with it all on your own. If you are selling or giving the piece to someone else, you need to decide whether you want your work to be known that way.
We all cause problems that we have to fix later. It’s a fact of life, it happens. Sometimes we know we’re causing a problem for our future selves to deal with, and sometimes we don’t. When we do know, why do we let it happen? Why not fix it in the moment? It’ll save time in the long run and cause us less stress along the way.
The other day I was making dinner for my family. Everything was ready and I called out to my two kids that it was time to get ready to sit down at the table. My son is almost 2 years old so the expectations on him to prepare himself for dinner are low. He comes over to the table and waits to be put into his chair so he can be adorned with his bib where he patiently waits for his plate to appear in front of him. My daughter is 3. She knows she needs to go to the bathroom to wash her hands, pick out her own bib, and get herself into her chair. When asked she also sets the table, just the forks. The other night she was upstairs playing, therefore not listening. I called to her, my wife called to her, I called to her again, and finally my wife walked up stairs to let her know it was time for dinner.
By the time she moseyed on downstairs, went potty, washed her hands, and came to the dinner table the food was plated and getting cold, we were all seated and waiting, and my patience was running low. To save some time I picked out her bib for her. In the moment I knew she wouldn’t like it but I didn’t care. She took her time so she lost a privilege to select a bib herself. Granted I picked her favorite pink bib thinking that would prevent the inevitable toddle tantrum. Instead of avoiding it I created a toddler tantrum. She got into her chair fine, but she did not want me to put the bib on her. I didn’t give her the option and did it anyway and boy did I receive a response. I had a spitting mad claws out red faced toddler in front of me. I had created my own problem and I knew it. Rather than back down to calm the situation I doubled down and escalated it. I put her in timeout so she could cool off and I could eat my food while it was still warm. I didn’t solve anything, just further delayed my problem to tensely chew and not enjoy the meal I’d spent the last 45 minutes on.
Luckily my wife stepped in, went and calmed my daughter down in under 5 seconds, had her come and apologize and tell me that she will come downstairs the first time she is asked. She sat in her chair, let me put her bib on her, and started eating dinner like nothing happened. I too apologized to her because I was as much at fault as she and later, after bedtime, asked my wife what she did to work such a miracle. She said she asked her to count to 10. By the time she hit 3 she had calmed down purely by concentrating on something else. My wife asked her to go sit in her chair so we can have dinner and let her know why I was upset so she could apologize and that was the end of it. No magic spells, just clear communication. Had I been paying attention I could have done the same from the outset, but I was upset myself so I didn’t. This happens to all of us, whether it’s at work, at school, at home, in the workshop. We encounter an unexpected event that clouds our mind and impacts our judgement.
So back to my planters. I had knowingly caused myself a problem. I tore out a bunch of grain with my aggressive sanding. I knew I was doing it but didn’t care because I was tired. This was the last step at the end of a weekend in the shop after a long week in the office. I wanted to go inside, take a shower, and drink a cold beer. So instead of spending 5 extra minutes sanding with my random orbit sander and a higher grit to smooth everything out to prepare for finishing I left it and promptly forgot until after I put the first coat of stain down and realized I couldn’t let these leave my shop this way. A sanding block and 5 minutes later I had rectified the situation and the boxes are ready for a final coat so they can head off to a happy client. In retrospect I should have taken my time and fixed the tear out in the moment, but I’m still learning and will do better next time.
Tear out removed after a few swipes with a sanding block
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