Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Terry Waters French Polishing. Our lads have gotten their share of chocolate today and we hope you have too. 
Welcome to the latest Terry Waters French Polishing News and Blogs
A Romantic Note About Wood
full listWooden Wonders we’d like to have French Polished: 14. Pinocchio
If you’re talking wooden wonders, fantastical folklore and delicious fictional French polishing challenges, there’s one icon you simply you can’t miss out – Pinocchio.
Caring for Synthetic Wood Effect Surfaces
The rise in the use of plastics since the Nineteen Thirties has meant that many things that were once made of wood are now made of cheaper, synthetic polymers which can be mass produced and moulded to shape in factories, rather than being carved over a number weeks in a workshop.
Finishing Your Luxury Yacht To Perfection
Even though new, lightweight materials mean that more and more boats are being built from things like carbon fibre and fibre glass, the interior fixtures and fittings in boats, particularly the super or luxury yachts, still tend to be made of wood. In the boating world, the use of wood as a high end finish is supremely desirable, tying the more traditional methods of boat building into the contemporary life style of the modern yacht owner.
French Polishing For Antiques Dealers
I recently met an antiques dealer who bought and sold old furniture. He had some beautiful pieces, all in fabulous condition. The wood work in particular was exquisite. As I was looking at his stock we got to talking about where the pieces had come from. His furniture ranged over three centuries in age and several hundred miles geographically. He was constantly on the look out for new pieces.
Types Of Shellac Used For French Polishing
Finishes on a wooden object can vary wildly, even objects which may have been polished in the same way and made of the same wood. The choice of varnish you apply can radically alter the look of the finished piece, and even the feel. Originally, the high quality finish and lustrous, deep shine created by French polishing came from using shellac, derived from the Lac beetle, originating in Asia.
Reclaim, Recycle, Re-Invigorate
Railway sleepers are often reclaimed and sold to make outdoor decking or mantel pieces over fire places. Old doors from demolished period houses can be bought from reclamation centres along with other wooden fixtures and fittings and put into new or renovated houses to create much needed character and a sense of history.
Expert Advise On Treating Wood In Conversions
Because wood which is properly treated can last hundreds of years, it is a perfect material for recycling, particularly in buildings. The perennially popular barn conversions, for example, when done to the highest quality, will salvage the timbers of the original barn and re-use them as showcase features in the new barn.
Bomb Site or Building Site?
Everyone dreads having the builders in. No matter how polite or careful they try to be, by the end of their time in your house there is invariably brick dust in the kettle, dirty footprints on the rugs, and interesting dents in the wall where the wheelbarrow has declared war on the render. You may love your new conservatory, but the squalor created in order to achieve it can be soul destroying.
What is French Polishing?
If you were asked off the top of your head to explain what French Polishing was, what would you say?
Invariably an image of a lustrous piece of antique furniture being lovingly restored by someone who looks like Arthur Negus from the original ‘Antiques Roadshow’ springs to mind. Either that or you experience a flashback to that Yellow Pages advert from the early Nineties, where a teenager with troubling eyebrows wakes up in his parents’ flat after a raucous party and is hysterical when he finds a scratch on the surface of an antique coffee table.
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