{"id":13504,"date":"2018-03-26T15:33:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T14:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=13504"},"modified":"2018-03-26T15:45:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T14:45:37","slug":"work-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/work-in-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Work in progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s just gone 4.00 pm here so I’ve stopped for a cup of tea. I’ve been working on my old oak table today. I haven’t done as much as I would have liked as I keep getting distracted and doing other things but that’s one of the prices you pay for being retired – there’s never enough time to do everything you want to.<\/p>\n

I love working with wood, especially old wood and especially old oak of which there’s plenty here in France. I borrowed an electric sander from Victor but in the end decided to stick to Plan A and rub the whole table down by hand. I prefer that because then you can feel how the wood is responding – I can’t explain how, but you just can and I think that almost everyone who enjoys working wood with their hands would agree with me.<\/p>\n

I’ve now just about finished ripping as much of the old surface off as I need to using 40 grade glasspaper. It sounds a bit crude but in my experience oak can stand it, although you must make sure that you always move the paper with the grain, even on the smallest of areas, so as not to leave visible scratches. And it’s coming up a treat as the following pictures show.<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had to spend a little time digging grease and dirty old wax polish out of the mouldings around the drawer face for which I used a small screwdriver and a scalpel, but it didn’t take too long to do and the results were worth the effort. In fact I haven’t yet been over the whole table, just an initial wipe over the top, with acetone to remove any old grease that’s left over which will clean it up even more.<\/p>\n

Even so, I think that it’s still pleasing to the eye and with further work will only get better. In fact I have a sneeking suspicion that this older table which has been in regular use for 10 years and has its share of honest marks to show for it, may end up with a nicer patina and look better as a result than the newer one. But I’ll have to wait and see. Meantime, time for another cup and back to work.<\/p>\n

The next job will be to complete the rubbing down with ever finer glasspaper until I get the whole table completely smooth. Then I’ll give everything apart from the top a mist coat of clear matt varnish so it matches its newer brother. I don’t intend to varnish the top – that will just get a periodic wipe over with teak oil to enhance the beauty of its grain as it’s in regular daily use over the coming months and years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s just gone 4.00 pm here so I’ve stopped for a cup of tea. I’ve been working on my old oak table today. I haven’t done as much as I would have liked as I keep getting distracted and doing other things but that’s one of the prices you pay for being retired – there’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13504"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13512,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13504\/revisions\/13512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}