The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
10. Steel Wool and Its Use. — Steel wool is often used to advantage in smoothing concave surfaces. The sizes of steel wool most commonly used are: 000 or 3/0, 00 or 2/0, 0, 1, and 2; 000 being the finest, and No. 2 the coarsest. Cartons or packages of steel wool in 1-pound, 5-pound, and 10-pound sizes are sold on the market by hardware stores, and paint and varnish supply-houses. Its cost at the present time varies from 40 cents to $1.00 a pound, the finer grades being the most expensive. In use, a ball or wad of steel wool is taken in the hand, and the surface is rubbed as with sandpaper. Strokes should be made with the grain whenever possible, as scratches will result if the abrasive is used crosswise or obliquely. Steel wool is not at present as uniform in fineness of grit as sandpaper, and is much more liable to make scratches; especially, if attempts are made to use it on flat surfaces.
11. Sponging and Resanding.—Beauty and clearness of grain can be secured by sponging with water. This is done in order to dampen and raise the grain on all surfaces that arc to be finished. Sponging the surface may be done with a wool sponge, an ordinary sponge, or with a soft large brush that holds water well. The wood should be dampened enough to cover all of the wood fibers on the surface with water, yet with not enough to leave a layer or coating that takes considerable time to dry. An excess of moisture might injure glue joints particularly those of veneer.
Fuzz appears over the entire surface of any piece of wood that has been sponged and allowed to dry. The surface of a piece of wood consists of cells4 which are something like long tubes running lengthwise of the grain. Many of these cells are cut through, exposing the ragged walls, when the processes of planing and scraping arc done. Fig. 5. Some of this roughness, however, is removed by sanding. The finest sandpaper does not remove all the fragments of the cell walls.
