It's all go

'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Thu 18 Aug 2011 08:29
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Yuri, in a rare moment of inactivity. His little electric motor must be heaving a sigh of relief at this point, because for the last few days it's been non-stop sand sand sand!
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Kuto and Yuri hard at it. Please note that not only is the chart table devoid of clutter, but it's been sanded to within an inch of its life. 'It' has been decided that the woodwork will be stained Maple, then finished off with a high-gloss lacquer.
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Shiny!!! All me own work Guv'nor. This was just a test area to check the colour and see what a high gloss finish looked like. Nice, eh? There's only two coats of stain and one of gloss, but you get the idea.
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A partly-sanded desk. Yes, there were shelves here as well but they've been removed for sanding/painting. The work-top has been sanded on the right-hand side and half of the centre section. Good old Yuri!
Now, you might be asking yourselves, why 'Yuri'?P8176347.jpg So I'll tell you. Pull up a chair and make yourselves comfortable.
Long. looong ago and depending on where you are whilst you're reading this, possibly far far away, there was a young lad called Yuri. Now Yuri's dad worked in the Soviet Peoples Furniture Factory number three, and during the summer holidays young Yuri would go to work with his dad and help out. Being a bit of a dreamer, they couldn't trust the lad with anything important, so they made him sand all the wood before they turned it into shoddy but steadfastly socialist, furniture. The years passed and Yuri joined the Soviet Air Force, eventually becoming a test pilot. He was so good at this that he was selected for the fledgling cosmonaut program and in the fullness of time became officially the first human into space (unofficially, the first one up who was I think a nephew of the aircraft designer Tupulov, had a nervous breakdown after or even during the trip, and couldn't be 'shown-off' in public). When this triumph of Soviet technology was announced at the furniture factory the workers all raised their bottles of vodka and proposed a toast to Yuri (Gagarin), the first orbital sander.
Since this is my first orbital sander, what else could I name it?
Now then, SANDers makes me think of SANDALS. My $30 jobbies have now clocked up about 250 kms with little sign of wear, surpassing the $8.50 pair from Vinod Patel. They've had their first service (a wash, they were definitely a bit 'wiffy') and are hopefully good for yet another 250 kms.
The plan for tomorrow, now that the saloon-area has been completely sanded, is to vacuum round the place then start staining! More pictures tomorrow.


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