The old table you see in this photo was found left with a heap of junk for someone to take before it all went to the tip.

I grabbed it because I’m always looking for something to demonstrate on. At first it didn’t look good enough even for a demo. It was greyish and covered in years of dust and other fallout and it appeared to have no character or grain whatsoever. So I began sanding it back with my Bosch random orbital sander and as the detritus was cut away I was more than pleased to see decent grain emerging and I knew I was on a winner. So I went ahead and did the sides and legs of the table as well.

After sanding it I needed to lift some of the residual filth out of wood so I sprayed some Howard Clean-A-Finish onto the surface and placed a good quality sponge backed with fine abrasive ( never use those cheap green things you buy in a bulk pack plastic wrap) into an old ice-cream bucket filled with warm water and took it out, sprayed a bit more into the abrasive side and then began to rub it into the wood, going with the grain and working up a lather.

When I saw that the wood was clean, fresh-looking and with no trace of junk I rinsed it down with a clean sponge, towelled it off and then went away to work on something else. The next day I came back to check on it and it was still slightly damp, so I gave it a bit more time and when I came back to it the next day it was dry.

Now it looked almost beautiful! Hard to believe when looking back on the dirty old thing I’d found originally. So I made a couple of shellackers rubbers by taking a piece of clean, lint-free cotton cloth about 500 cm square and tearing it in two, then laying the two pieces side by side on the table. I then shredded one piece into slivers, then balled up those slivers into a really tight bunch and placed it into the middle of the other cloth. Then I pulled up each corner of that cloth filled with the bunched up shreds and formed it into a tight ball then folded wrapped one of the slivers around it to keep it bound tight. You can even use a thin cable tie to do that if you prefer.

Now I place the tied up end of the ball up into the palm of my cupped hand and dunk into into another old ice-cream container into which I have already poured my Orange Tung Wood Oil to about 2-3 centimetres deep. I let it soak up the oil for about 5 seconds then begin rubbing it into the wood pressing quite hard and going with the grain. By the way I did the same routine on the edges of the table and all the legs.

Next thing I did was to make certain that the coat was applied thin and even and went away to have a cuppa. That took about 15 minutes and when I came back to the job I blotted or blended away any loose or gooey looking excess oil with my squeezed out shellackers rubber and made sure that the coat was uniformly even. You saw me use a clean cloth to blot away the excess in my videos on the Video page of this website but sometimes I just go on with my shellackers rubber.

After I was satisfied that the job was looking good I then checked my watch and went off to do other stuff. I checked my watch before I left because I knew that I had to give the piece 24 hours to dry. When I came back it was dry, but other times with similar jobs, when I’ve come back after 24 hours the surface had still not dried sufficiently, so I had to wait another 24 hours before it was OK.

Anyway this time it was ready to give it a second coat, so I checked it out to be sure there were no sticky patches anywhere and then I did everything the same way as before. After 24 hours I came back and the table looked beautiful. In fact it looked so good I decided not to bother giving it that third coat that I always recommend in order to get the best looking and most durable coat. In any event I knew that I could always give it another coat down the track as long as I cleaned it down, even give it a very light sand if it was looking shabby, but only enough to give the surface a bit of “tooth” for the new coat to hold better. So that’s it…take a look at the finished job. I love it enough to use on our verandah as an occasional table.