The last of the 24 shelves for Pavlo Pottery in Rockton On. The second set of shelves was stained Traditional Cherry , a very nice light brownish red colour. This is a colour that I would use on projects of my own. The first finish was Cabernet, and too red for my taste, though it was distinctive.
This was a very instructive situation for me. It taught me a number of things, some of which I had suspected, some that I vaguely remembered and some that were new.
Suspected:
I will not work with oil based finishing products again. I have pretty much eliminated them from my shop but this project served as final notice. There is nothing that I do that can not be well served with water based finishing products or things like hemp oil or tung oil. There will be no more solvents in my basement, they stink (big time) and ruin brushes and everything they touch.
I am not good at estimating the amount of labour a task is going to require. Fortunately Pavlo T offered to pay my shop time by the hour. I never would have guessed that it would have taken as much time to do the job as it did. Had I quoted on the job I would have hated myself as I would have been working for a couple of dollars an hour by the end of it all.
Finishing is a special set of skills and one that a carpenter like myself has only developed to a limit degree, I need to continue to work on these skills. Also large objects, even when flat need a whole different approach than small projects. A spray booth is certainly the only way to do something like this quickly and well.
Remembered:
Man you can get a bunch of work done if you put your head down and apply yourself. It had been a long time since I had this type of assignment and I'd nearly forgotten what can be done when you have a plan and stick to it. This is a lesson that many people don't learn any longer and that is too bad.
My shop is small, when it came to the drying stage I had shelves all over the place, in the shop, in the family room and in the pantry downstairs. Smaller shop space means smaller projects.
A large job is more than just a whole bunch of small jobs done in succession. I knew it would use a bunch of brushes, rags and sand paper, but I had forgotten how much and a how many. It also needed different methods of wood, setting up to clamps a dozen large boards required some serious space making in the shop.
Laminated pine boards are more like wood than plywood, and can be made into something nice, but...they are soft and need more than average filler/conditioner to give a good finish.
A good hand saw is a good tool. To cut the corners off I just used a back saw. Jeez it worked well and I was happy with the result.
I love my 45 degree (not ) square. A set gauge for 45 degrees is much nicer to work with than an adjustable, sliding gauge, smaller and you never have to worry about whether it has slipped.
Large carpenter's squares can get out of square. Mine must have been dropped, it is not square. I now have to put in time to correct that little problem.
New:
Production on a large scale like this means that you have to organize your time and space totally differently or you get crushed by your inefficiencies.
I would do this again, I would do it differently and .....probably get another happy result with less stress.
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