I receive emails all the
time asking for refinishing help or advise. I noticed a trend a
little while back was starting to develop that I had never
really noticed in past years. I started receiving a lot of
"panic emails".
People started a project,
ran into a serious problem (or so they perceive), and then kick
into panic mode and search the web for help. When seeking out
help on the net, have you ever asked yourself this fundamental
question? What if the advise I just received was wrong?
I recall getting into this
business back in the early eighties. There was no
internet, and everything was learned the hard way. I literally
have blocked many of those frightening memories of the past from
my mind. Thank
god we have the web now, so people don't have to suffer such
hardships ;-) But with this awesome tool comes
responsibility. We users need to realize that anyone can
post information without a resume and without consequence.
Kevin emailed me several
times and called the office in total panic mode. He had applied
stripper to a piece of furniture and thought that he may have
ruined it.....the good news was, he didn't!
Then there was Pam. Pam sent pictures of her
buffet that had been in the family for many years. It meant a
lot to her, so she decided to refinish it. Pam was
fearless, and dove into her new found furniture refinishing
hobby with zest. She began to sand the
finish off with an orbital sander. Now.....I would have advised
against this because it only works on select furniture
and definitely not ever on veneered pieces. When Pam emailed me, She was concerned that
she had over sanded and may have ruined her beloved buffet.
I about fell out of my chair when I saw the picture....Pam used
an electric orbital disc sander, but only sanded one spot. It
was veneer and she sanded all the Finish AND veneer off in a
perfect little circle the size of the sanding disc.
Pam was not as lucky as Kevin, she did ruin her buffet and was
pretty devastated. My only advise for her at that point
was to paint it.
I started to wonder why I
was receiving these emails so often? One thing Kevin and
Pam had in common was they both searched for their "how to"
advise on the web. My curiosity kicked in and I began a
search. I had never really thought about this before, but as I
looked around I was pretty appalled at some of the horrifically
inaccurate info I was coming across. It became obvious in
a pretty short time how unsuspecting people like Pan & Kevin
were so easily misguided.
It frustrates me to see
this, because It shouldn't happen. Unfortunately, there are no
internet police and the lack of consequence has made a lot of
folks with a keyboard and some spare time overnight experts in a
field that even I am not sure I'm even an expert in.....and I do it
everyday, and have done so going on 30 years now. The
internet is still a baby, and right now we are all so happy just
to have "answers" at our fingertips that I think we forget to
question the accuracy and the source.
Obviously...you somehow
landed here, so that is a good thing! This topic after
all, is the reason we started the
Refinishing Studio
Learning Center in the first place. Just be sure when taking
any advise on the internet that the person giving the advise
is credible and has a strong background in the field. Especially
when working on furniture...where one false move may be the doom
of your family heirloom.
