From: rcbi27@muvms3.bitnet (DBRUM)
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
Subject: another woodworking disaster
Date: 25 Aug 92 17:39:56 GMT
Organization: Marshall University

I think this will fit in with the current woodworking disasters discussion.

I had been working for weeks on a design for a jewelry box that could be
mass-produced by me in my humble workshop. The purpose was that if I could
sell enough of these things, I could invest in all that wonderful machinery
and my shop would no longer be a humble one.

I have a good bandsaw for resawing close to finished demensions, but no
planer to finish these pieces down. That's one of the things I hoped to
remedy with the Super Jewel Box Design. I figured I could humble along
with the excellent low angle block plane I had picked up at an excellent
price from a local place sadly going out of business. It was a great deal,
and the pieces I'd be planing down to finished size would be smallish. With
a little (well, alright, make that "alot" :-) of sweat equity and no small
amount of plain old fashioned luck, I'd soon complete the vangard set of
jewel boxes and be on my way to fame and fortune.

After the sacrafice of a few precious weekends of research and development
(read: "trial and error" :-), I finally got the design down just right. I
had the first raft of boxes assembled and was rapidly ascending through finer
and finer grits of sand paper. I wanted them sanded down well, so that a
modicum of time would be spent on applying a finish; I didn't want production
to be bogged down by applying multiple coats of finishing goops; one quick
coat of something like tung oil on an utterly smooth surface and voila!...off
to the waiting public.

To ensure the smoothest of surfaces, I intelligently raised the grain after
getting down to the black automotive sheets of abrasives. Then a funny thing
happened. Everything was going along perfectly and then suddenly, literally
right before my very eyes the cherry and maple boxes began to turn green.
GREEN! No kidding. If I had any friends I'd have sworn they were plaing a
practical joke on me. This mysterious sudden musty grreening of perfectly
good wood is the sort of unexplainable phenomenon that causes inexperienced
woodworkers to awaken with a start in the middle of the night. I stood there
at the workbench, puzzled--puzzled? More like overwhelmed. Mortified. Panic
stricken yet immobilized.

What could it be? I wondered. The water, yes the water! I had drawn in 
sparingly from a seldom used brass tap to dampen the rag to raise the grain.
"A-ha!" said I, glaring with a mixture of scorn and triumph of my deducirary
skills upon aforementioned tap. Quickly I sanded away the green--well, not
really quickly; it was in there good. To prove my ingeniousness and to alay
the fears and trepidations which still troubled my poor palpitated heart,
this time I raised the grain from the jug of spring water I kept nearby to
slake my workmanly thirst.

But, horror of horrors, the green reappeared!

GREEN! GREEN! OH GOD IN HEAVEN, WAS THERE EVER SUCH A PLAGUE AS PLAIN OLD 
GREEN!?

Now I was really beside myself. That term is really apropos. That's really
how I felt. I was at a loss, man. Seeing all my labor go down the drain and
not even having solved the problem. But then I did figure it out. Finally.
Remember the nifty little block plane I told you about? Well, being a
knowlegeable woodworker, one of the first things I did after purchasing this
little beauty was to flatten the sole by rubbing it on a piece of black
automotive sandpaper, and, well, it just so happens I inadvertently picked
up *that* piece of black sandpaper to use while raising the grain. A chemical
reaction must have occured.

And so, the end of the story. Moral: from now on I'm going to immediately
throw away whatever sandpaper I use to flatten the sole of metal planes.
That paper was really fine, and without a really close inspection didn't
look as though it had been used at all.

--danny
-- 
	"Were his solid black square paintings really,
	as the artist claimed, simply neutral, abstract
	compositions devoid of external references and
	meanings?" ***********************************