I had a cutting board made from some nice wood, but which was starting to lose its bright appearance.
A bit of research later, and I get some food-safe mineral oil and wax to restore the surface. Long story short, I was so impressed by how my cutting board came back to life, now I’m looking for any excuse to touch up all the wood in our house. I don’t even mind if I clean the cutting board and wash off some of the wax, because then I have an excuse to apply another layer. There’s something fun about buffing and polishing a surface.
I’m thinking of getting into woodworking just so I can do this more. I don’t even really want to make anything, just apply a bunch of tung oil to a random plank and then wax it to a shine.
Join us over at woodworking@lemmy.ca, which seems to be the place for woodworking on the fediverse.
See if there is a woodworker you can team up with. Sanding and finishing is loathed and dreaded by us, at least in my carpentry circle. We want the cutting and glueing and clamping jobs.
I don’t really mind sanding, I tend to put on some headphones and zone out. It can be a lot on big jobs. Planing and scraping can reduce the amount of sanding you need to do.
I often look forward to the process of at least starting the finish because I like watching the grain pop out.
But yes shortly after vacuuming sanding is probably the first major task I’d assign to an apprentice.
I find polishing my wood a few too many times in close frequency gives me soreness of the shoulders and elbow. Doing a little jerking off first can help loosen up for the important bits.
Whats your tung oil routine?
Solid advice.
This is why I came to lemmy.This is why I came to lemmy.
nice
Also using shampoo on my wood makes it burn like a motherfucker.
Clean Energy!
As someone that’s been doing woodworking for the last couple of years: buy a pack of sandpaper of various grits to smooth and watco natural or medium walnut color danish oil to finish. Will cost you like $40 on Amazon or at a hardware store, but will let you see how you like the hobby without having to learn a ton. If you like it, get a saw and a 2x4 and make some simple little household object like a key hook or poop knife. Once you’ve started making handy little things for yourself, you’ll get sucked in and develop a nuanced taste in glues and sandpaper while spending all of your money on the “one more tool I need” and growing to fully occupy all space in the garage. The custom furniture is a nice plus.
Is a poop knife what it sounds like?
No, it’s a specific type of croquet hammer. Don’t worry about it.
What do you use in stead?
Poop hand
Do you not have a poop knife at your house?
Get you some quality wood handled tools. If it has that shiny slick varnish whatever on the handle, scrape that shit off with a sharp knife and season the fuck out of those handles!
I love doing this to random items.
I loathe doing this to the deck outside.
Why is the deck different?
The gratification is not as instant.
Weak initial dopamine hit. It’s a certain fail.
I’ve never conditioned any wood before. Why is the deck not as instant gratification?
It just takes much more work and time to complete the job! Something relatively smaller, like a cutting board, can be done quicker.
I don’t know, sanding it takes days for starters.
I have a friend who was refinishing and sanding his deck.
Between starting and finishing the sanding, his neighbour tore down and installed a whole new deck. He said he had never felt like such a chump.
Have you been introduced to cast iron?
If not, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Oh yesssss. Get middling quality cast iron, grind it flat, and reseason. A couple of hours of work and you have primo quality cast iron cookware.
Also: you can clean cast iron with soap.
Obligatory mention: !castiron@lemmy.world
Well, that’s an instant subscribe. Thx!
What do you use to grind it flat? Mines got some crators I’d like to get rid of and didnt know this was an option.
A random orbit palm sander, or really any other sander that’s round, will do just fine.
What wax did you use?
I’ve got a bunch of wooden utensils I need to do this to. I’m more of a wax/oil paste guy myself though. Guess I know what I’m up to tomorrow afternoon
Wait till you discover conditioning leather
Are you me? This is blow-for-blow exactly what has happened to me over the last year or so. I am hanging on by a thread against the desire to get into woodworking, someone send help.
I’ve been woodworking for a few years, I’ve been tempted to start a Peertube channel about it, and I’d be tempted to do woodworking for beginners kind of content.
I have a background in flight instruction, I work well when I have a student to work with, would you (or @CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) be interested in somehow collaborating on something like that? Record some shop-to-shop video calls or something?
Agreed. Did my wood knife handles recently. Gotta do my spatulas, maybe some spoons even.
