It's Cleanup Time

*Update: Class Spots Have Opened!!!*

Space has just opened in my March 24th Helix class as well as Follansbee’s May 25th class. You can enroll anytime by emailing info@petergalbert.com.

After lots of interruptions, I finally got to dig into the refurbishing of the chairs from Lie-Nielsen. These chairs have been public seating in the showroom in Maine and folks have clearly been using them.

The C-arm had coffee spilled in the seat and there are lots of dings from folks carrying wrench sets and hand grenades in their back pockets.

I made these seats out of butternut, knowing that pine would show damage from the assault more readily. Butternut is still rather soft, so it still shows the dents and scratches. I started by using a wet paper towel and iron to steam out as much as I could. Tom said he wanted the chairs “freshened up”, not completely redone, so some of the wear and tear will still show, though, I did decide to repaint the C-arm.

I don’t usually repaint chairs, so I a called Curtis B., who recently had to repaint some chairs due to some bad paint. He told me he used Barkeepers Friend to strip the finish and paint. It works really well.

I put the cleanser on a pad and scrubbed and rinsed until the paint and finish was well reduced and the surface was clean of residue. I try to keep the moisture out of the joints.

Once I stripped it down, the real tough question remained, “what was that mix of colors?!”. See, I mixed this paint about 7 years ago, and I kept the recipe pinned to the wall of my shop. Then I moved….I did remember the colors I used, peacock, navy and deep sapphire from the Real Milk Paint company, so I ordered some fresh paint and got to mixing. I had some recall of the mix and gave it a go. One key to remember is that it isn’t as simple as matching the color on the chair, because you have to factor in the way the oil will affect the tone. I think I pretty much nailed it

It looks a little bluer before the oil hits. I’ll show the finished color when I get there.

On the unpainted Comb back, most of the issue was with the hands. I suspect one issue is that folks in the showroom are constantly touching the bronze and steel tools and then rubbing the hands.

It would look great if the whole chair was aging even a tiny bit similarly, but the hands took off about a century of color first. So I knocked em back a bit with the cleanser and a lot of elbow grease and re oiled them.

The endgrain still holds a bit of the color but in a less jarring way.

I’m excited to get these done and back into service.