Joiner's Musings

Bumper damage on nearly new car This is the rear passenger side bumper on a 1-year old up-market car. You can see how scuffed it is after having been nudged by another car in a parking lot. Well, here is the story. I was at a meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia and parked out front of the building where the meeting was held, not on the street, mind you but in a private parking lot. The spaces were pretty tight and I thought about the possibility of a door ding or something relatively minor. I have a thing about door dings and I am always, well, usually careful about where I park. The meeting lasted into the late afternoon and upon coming out of the building I noticed that my bumper was damaged. "Heck", I said (well not exactly "heck"). As I got around to the driver's door I noticed a note tucked into the window frame. On it it said "hey, I rubbed on the side of your car. I don't think I did any damage but just in case AM" (name protected) with ...

Stripped Stromberg Carlson console radio Well, It was hard work getting the gluing and clamping done for the Stromberg Carlson console radio (circa 1946); I had to do it in 6 stages. The stripping was interesting because I had to be really careful with the fumes from the Circa 1850 stripper and the lacquer thinner. I therefore had to restrict my work time to about 20-30 minutes per day so that the fumes would not overcome me. It worked out well because I had an electric fan blowing on me while I was working and that seems to push the fumes away from me very effectively. As you can see the radio has been stripped. The next phase is the steel wool rubdown. I will use #0000 steel wool dipped in lacquer thinner to take any residual lacquer off the finish and to more-or-less sand it to a smooth finish. I will continue with the steel wool for the next few days until the whole cabinet is done. Next, I will move onto the staining phase which will involve using both dark and light wal...