Tag Archives: Wood

DIY - Do It Yourself

Refinishing Olive Wood Spoons

In 2014 we visited Greece, and on December 30th, we were in Delphi staying at a small quaint hotel whose elevator put the fear of God in us. The vibrant town was quiet and subdued – the summer tourists weren’t there and the arrivals for New Years Eve handn’t arrived so we had the town more or less to ourselves and some locals.

We walked by a shop and they invited us in. They had tons and tons of bowls, plates, spoons and what have you made from olive wood. There are huge ancient groves of olive trees tended by families for generations surrounding Delphi so there was an ample supply of olive wood to draw from.

Olive wood is simply gorgeous when sanded and finished bears all kinds of browns, tans and wavy grain structure. It’s strong, dense and does great indoors – especially when oiled but doesn’t do as well outdoors or with insects as it lacks natural oils.

At any rate, the products were all made in and around Delphi. We opted for some nice kitchen spoons and a juicer given the striking look of the wood. Before we knew it, the trip was over and we headed home.

December 2023

I was trying to think of something to do as a surprise for my wife and happened across the spoons and juicer from Delphi – they were looking pretty tough. The wood was faded and you could just barely see what they looked like 9 years prior so I decided to clean them up.

The three utensils from the left are mmade from Olive Wood and were showing their age. The flat tool on the far left was a different wood but I am not sure what is – I just decided to try and touch it up at the same time.

The first thing I did was to run over the spoons with a 220 grit sanding mop in a small drill press that I have dedicated for that purpose. I use sanding mops to finish grips so the station sees a lot of use.

The next thing I did was to use butcher block conditioner to revitalize and protect the olive wood. In general, the conditioners are some combination of food safe mineral oil and waxes that penetrate a wood surface to help protect it. I’ve used a few brands over the years and my favorite is the butcher block conditioner from Howard Products.

There is a bit of a trick I do with restoring a wood finish like this. First off, I rub it in with 0000 steel wool to knock down any stray wood fibers. In case you aren’t familiar with steel wool – “0000” is a very fine grade meant for final finishing. You put the conditioner on thick and let it set for 4-8 hours. You’ll be surprised how much gets absorbed by the wood.

I then wipe it off with a rag and apply it thick again by hand – I don’t use steel wool after the first application. Again, let it sit and absorbe for 4-8 hours, wipe off the residue and repeat.

This was after three rounds. You can see the 0000 steel wool and the Howards Butcher Block Conditioner. I’m pretty sure I did another coat after this photo was taken.

You’ll notice with the third or fourth application that less and less is being absorbed so stop where you want and buff the piece with a rag or shop towel.

You may still see or feel a hint of oil but it will disappear in a day or so as it finally gets absorbed. You really can’t go wrong with this finish – just apply, let it sit, rub it off, and repeat until you get the look you want.

They looked so much better!
I love the patterns and colors of olive wood.
This is the juicer. I ddin’t get a “before” photo but it looked the same as the others. Due to all of the angles, I just used the steel wool to remove stray wood fibers but didn’t sand it. It has 3-4 coats of conditioner on it at the point this photo was taken.

Summary

The utensils from Greece turned out really nice – like new really. My wife is very happy and I shouldn’t wait so long to do it again in the future. It’s amazing how fast time flies by.

Howard Butcher Block Conditioner is my go-to finishing product for breathing life into any wood that comes into contact with food – cutting blocks, wood bowels, utensils, etc. I pretty much follow the above process on all of them.

I hope this helps you out.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

Furniture

Restoring a Pair of Director’s Chairs

Our church has a rummage sale once a year to raise money for the school and people donate stuff to sell. Maybe 3-5 years ago, my wife and I saw two old director’s chair wooden frames towards the end of the sale when they were just trying to get rid of stuff. The finish showed a lot of exposure to water – probably from sitting on a deck but the wood was solid. The canvas seat and back strap were long gone as well. At any rate, we got both for $5, stuck them in the garage for a “some day maybe” project.

My eldest daughter was getting married and somehow my wife envisioned using the chairs in an area for people to take photos. Armed with this, she talked me into digging out the old frames and figuring out next steps. By the way, I had a lot going on and was truthfully only semi-interested in doing the work but that changed part way in and you’ll see why.

Finding Replacement Canvas Covers

Thankfully, I didn’t have to do it all in a rush so I had time to do some digging. The first big question was what to do about the missing canvas. Well, I found out they are called “covers” and there are two primary kinds – ones that connect to the frame with a round wood rod and others that use a flat piece of wood. Our’s used a flat rod.

The next step was to find out if we could even find affordable covers. Well, I started searching on Amazon and there are actually a lot of premade options [click here to open a browser tab with them].

To measure your chair, lock them fully open and measure from left to right and for the seat – front to back. For the top, I did top to bottom. The left to right measures are really critical because you don’t want the canvas to be super loose – it will stretch and sag with time.

The height of the back cover and the depth of the seat are flexible – your measures are the maximums. At most X inches tall or Y inches deep.

We went with covers from “Everywhere Chair” on Amazon. Their supplied measures were: Seat Width: 22.5″ and Depth 15.25″. The back was 21.5″ wide and 6.5″ tall. This seemed to match the closest with what I was looking for so we ordered them.

What I don’t have photos of is that we test fit the covers as soon as we got them. This was both in case we needed to return them and also, I did not want to spend a bunch of time restoring the wood that we couldn’t get covers for.

Restoring the Wood

In the summer, my shop extends into my driveway. One afternoon, I took a serious look at the wood and realized there were a number of cracks I needed to deal with. Thankfully they were all narrow because you can quickly and easily fill them with thin super glue – also known Cyanoacrelate or “CA” glue. Lately, I have been using Starbond brand thin CA and it works great.

You can see the weathered finish and a hairline crack in this forearm.
I did 2-3 applications of superglue on that crack. The first application will really soak into the wood grain so you let that cure for a minute or two and then apply another and wait. Another and wait. You keep applying thin CA glue until it stays on the surface. Another option if you have slightly wider cracks is to sand the wood at the same time and pack the crack with the combination of sawdust and uncured/wet CA glue.
I kept walking around the two chairs and moving them around so I could see all of the surfaces. Any time I found a crack, I filled it.

Sanding & Finishing

Next up, I needed to sand the chairs to get rid of the worn finish and the CA glue. I like to use a Dewalt 5″ Dual Action sander and it quickly cleaned up everything using 150 grit sanding discs.

Used a Dewalt 5″ dual action sander with 150 grit sandpaper to clean things up. Also used a fine sanding spong from Ace to clean up the rounded surfaces and spot touch ups.
I went around both chairs fixing dings and removing the old finish.

As I mentioned above, I really wasn’t into it until the next part. I started applying Minwax Provincial stain and just a beautiful orangish brown started coming out. Once I saw that, I was all in – I did not expect the wood to take the stain that nicely or be colored the way it was.

This is the first coat after I wiped down the chair and removed the initial stain that hadn’t soaked in.

Mixwax Provincial stain is sem-transparent and oil based. It really soaked in nicely and I applied two heavy coats. I applied the first using a blue shop towel, let it sit for about 10 minutes and wiped it off. I then did it a second time. I took care to wipe down the metal hardware so the superficial stain wouldn’t turn into a sticky residue.

Installing the Covers

I backed off the screws for the arms of the chairs enough so I could insert the canvas with the flat wood slats in them. That slats sit a tad higher than I wouldhave liked. I debated cutting down the slats to half their thickness but instead figured I’d see what happens over time.

Just back off the bottom screws enough so the canvas with the seat slat can be inserted in the groove behind the hinge.
Notice the chair is not locked open. I needed it partially closed so I could easily insert the canvas seat and slats. In hindsight, I could have stained the ends of the slats but that didn’t occur to me at the time.
The back cover just slides on the posts. Lock the chair open only after both are installed.
I really like how they turned out.
Here’s another view of them at the wedding venue.

Summary

We got the frames for $5 and and then $29/ea for the replacement covers. We then used some CA glue, stain and sanding discs – I’d ballpark each of the two seats cost about $40/ea. I have no idea who made these frames but I think we saved a bit of money but that wasn’t the real goal here – we wound up restoring two chairs and creating some memories with them that we will have even longer.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.


Furniture, General, Home Repair, Uncategorized

Use Super Glue to Seal and Stabilize Wood

Have you ever had wood that is in tough shape or is too soft to work with? A quick fix is to use super glue on the wood and let it set. Let’s talk about this for a minute.

Super glue is actually a family of glues called “Cyanoacrylates“. The patent for the original product goes back to 1942 when BF Goodrich was looking for a clear adhesive for gun sights in WWII. As they say, the rest is history.

There are many different brands and types of super glue. For the brand, I stick with name brand and usually get biggger bottles from firms such as Bob Smith Inc (BSI), Starbond, Loctite, Gorilla Glue, etc. With the no-name generics, you never quite know what is really in the formula or how good it is.

The glues are available in different viscocities/thicknesses also ranging from Super thin to normal, to gel, etc. For our purposes, we want th thinnest glue we can buy. Why? Because it will really soak into the wood and follow all of the little cracks that are opening, seal and reinforce them.

So, when I say I am using it to seal and stabilize, what do I mean? To seal means that water can’t get in. To stabilize means it is soaking into the soft wood, filling small cracks and when it dries it will harden the treated area. I’ve used this to fill small cracks in wood rifle stocks, knife handles, tools, furniture – anything with wood.

Super Glue is good for stabilizing but not filling an area. If you need to build something up, fill in a gap, or rebuild an area, then use an epoxy.

These slats bench slats had chunks of wood missing that I built up using epoxy. I sanded them down flush and then applied two coats of thin CA glue to the surrounding wood to stabilize it. I then used an opaqe wood deck stain and you couldn’t even see the repairs.

I apply several coats. The first one I apply quite a bit of glue and just let it keep soaking in. You’ll see it following cracks and what not. Once I get the surface soaked, I stop and let it cure. I typically wil do 2-3 coats/applications depending on how bad the wood looks. Usually after the second coat everything is sealed stabilized.

As it cures you will see a light white-ish smoke. Don’t get the fumes in your eyes or it really stings – you don’t want to breath them either. Small pieces like a knife handle aren’t too bad. For pieces bigger than that, all of the fumes really make this something you either want to do outside or in a room with really good ventilation.

Let me show you a few photos form a recent project where I needed ro reinforce the area around a wood gate latch. The wood was in really tough shape and I didn’t have the time to go to buy the lumber, cut it and make a new one. I keep thin super glue in stock at all times for all kinds of projects so I just did that

Starbond makes good CA glues from my experience. I’ve used a number of their forumlas and been happy with the results. As you can see, the wood is in tough shape. It probably should be replaced but I don’t have the time.
I let gravity work with me and apply the glue to the top of the wood and let it soak into the end grain. I could see it going down the board and the wood looking wet where it travelled. You’ll use a fair amount of glue doing this, I went across the entire top of that board and watched for the glue to penetrate – in this case I wanted it down near the screws. When it the glue cures, the stabilized wood will still a bit darker than the surrounding untreated areas.
This board was in really tough shape. It soaked in a lot of glue and I kept adding it until I saw it saw it in that big crack.
Here, the CA can help seal the top and stop the small cracks but there is no way it can fill the big crack.

Summary

You can definitely use thin super glue to seal and stabilize wood. Use a reputable brand and work in a well ventilated area. What I have been using the most lately is Starbond and they have a full lineup – click here to see them on Amazon.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

Gunsmithing

Got Startled Looking At My Dad’s M1 Garand – The Stock Had Dried Out

Some of you who know me as “ronin” back on the AKFiles way back when may recall that I bought my dad a M1 Garand, his bucket list rifle, back in 2011 after he was diagnosed with cancer. Just in case something ever happened to the AKFiles post, I had saved the text and photos and put them into a blog post on my site [click here].

My dad passed away in 2014 and I couldn’t even look at the rifle – it just hurt too much. I talked to one of my best friends, Scott, about it because he’d lost his dad too and he told me to just tuck it away and look at it some day in the future. He knew the rifle meant a lot to me and I took his advice.

So fast forward to the present time. I finally decided it was time to look at the Garand and make sure it wasn’t rusting. I recalled oiling it before putting it away the last time but that was six years previous. At any rate, I opened the CMP case up and everything looked good.

I then rolled back the Limbsaver pad off the butt of the stock – I’d put it there so the rifle wouldn’t kick my dad too hard – and the wood had visibly dried out under the Limbsaver. I really don’t know why – it must have been something to do with the polymer in the Limbsaver slip-on pad and the linseed oil on the stock.

I saw the dry wood and literally thought “Oh no”. Then I got a grip, realized it was just dry and tracked down what type of linseed oil to get.

It was a shock and really started me. My dad was the one who taught me how to shoot and clean firearms. That I might have let him down and hurt his rifle did not sit well at all.

The Limbsaver pad worked great with my dad. I guess I shouldn’t have left it installed for six years. By the way, I am not blaming the recoil pad – Limbsaver pads are my favorites to help tame recoil.

It turns out that the original buttstocks were finished with linseed oil and the dark reddish color they take on over time is from the linseed oil oxidizing. This was real linseed oil that is sometimes called raw or pure linseed oil and not boiled linseed oil that will have chemicals added to it to speed up the drying time.

I did some digging and found SunnySide Raw Linseed oil on Amazon.com in both pint and gallon containers. If you are touching up wood, a pint is plenty. I bought a gallon to have for other uses and I may have it a long time given my current rate of usage.

All of the local hardware stores had boiled linseed oil and I was able to find this on Amazon.

With raw linseed oil, be very sure to lightly applied it to the wood and let it soak in and dry before applying the next. I did two very light coats over several days. Never put it on thick or it will get gummy and may never dry.

As I was applying the first coat I could already tell it was going to look amazing.
I was still appling the linseed oil at this point but notiice the dry area is gone. Even after the linseed oil cured it was gone.

Also, there is a real important fire hazard you need to know. When linseed oil dries it gets hot and can spontaneously combust. You do not want to crumple up towels that have linseed oil on them and toss them in your trash – they just might ignite.

I take my old towels and burn them in my burn barrel. Some guys who can’t do that will lay the towels out flat on bricks or concrete that can’t burn and let them dry before throwing them out. When laid flat they do not get hot enough to catch fire and are safe once dry.

Ignore the mess and look at the wood.
Here’s a close up of a cartouche after two coats.

Let me reinforce an earlier comment – this stuff dries slow. Apply it thin, let it dry all the way before you install the next coat. I would definitely recommend making sure it is fully dried before putting the rifle back into a case or the padding in the case may stick to the finish. I guess a hard lesson learned for me from years ago is that when it comes to finishes, you need to do your homework about how to apply each type and be patient. When I was younger I was very impatient and ran into different problems many times. With my dad’s Garand, I knew to be very patient.

Summary

If you have a Garand with a dry stock, try appling one or more light coats of raw linseed oil and let it dry all the way. The results were amazing. So, I checked the Garand over all the way, oiled it again, left the slip on recoil pad off the stock and put it back in storage. Maybe I will take it to the range this summer and remember my dad.

I hope this helps you out.

Note, I have to buy all of my parts – nothing here was paid for by sponsors, etc. I do make a small amount if you click on an ad and buy something but that is it. You’re getting my real opinion on stuff.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.