Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe

Thu, Aug 23 2012 02:45 | alvis, varnish, windows, woodwork


If you’re old enough to have a bus pass then you will probably remember Frankie Howerd (Lurcio) speaking these lines on television in “Up Pompeii” through the early ‘70s. I have a certain empathy with that but in my case “Woe” is also known “As if it ain’t broke...parts 1, 2, 3 or 4” so without further ado...

Woe 1

You left me last month with a new hood bag but a soaking wet car having driven over the South Downs through the clouds and the sort of rain us Southerners thought only happened north of Watford. 

Two days later with the help of the dehumidifier, the car was dry but....the woodwork had taken a real hammering. Being a sort of upmarket convertible it has copious bits of wood trim. I'd previousl repolished about ten pieces around the windscreen where the rubber had disintegrated but this job was much more comprehensive; in all there were 24 pieces which I took out and a nice touch was that most of them had the body number from Carbodies who made the bodywork, written on the back in pencil. 

Repolishing them was a production line event.
Each piece needed three coats of stripper to get the old polish off; the drive over the Downs hadn't quite stripped them!

Then I cleaned them with White Spirit.

The next step was to varnish them using a pad which comprised the best soft linen or cotton I could get and in the centre of this I put either cotton wool or some other absorbent material to act as a reservoir for the polish. This ensured that there were no brush strokes.

The varnish I used was an exterior satin finish yacht varnish. 

However it was a bit trial and error as, to begin with I used a cheaper cotton cloth which just left bits of fluff behind so they all had to be redone.
Each of the four coats of varnish was left to dry for 24 hours and then rubbed down using 0000 grade wire wool and again cleaned with White Spirit. 

This was followed up with four coats of Liberon Black Bison wax. This was applied with 0000 wire wool, left for about an hour and then polished with a good quality polishing cloth. 

So with seven or eight coats of varnish and wax this now has a nice honey coloured look in addition to the mahogany itself.

It's tempting to see what happens to it if it gets wet...but I won't!

However that was not the end of it as the windows are all of the wind up variety but they work on the same principal as a roller blind but obviously with a much MUCH stronger spring....see Woe 2

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