If you are an avid wood worker or do it yourselfer don?t you just hate it when the neighbor comes over to borrow one of your precious paintbrushes? Then a day or two later he lets you know that he returned your brush back to the workshop. You go to use it a week or two later and it’s hard as a rock. Simple answer it wasn’t cleaned properly.

If you are an avid wood worker or do it yourselfer don’t you just hate it when the neighbor comes over to borrow one of your precious paintbrushes? Then a day or two later he lets you know that he returned your brush back to the workshop. You go to use it a week or two later and it’s hard as a rock.

Most often we move into a new house and find a built in butcher block top. At first, it looks great but on closer inspection, it doesn’t look so good. Butcher blocks aren’t something new on the market or even old fashion like from the 70?s. They go back hundreds of years. At that time, the favored wood was maple or various other types of hardwood. In today?s building of the butcher blocks, they are quite often made from imported hardwoods, which gives a bit more of a variety. It must be remember that years ago there wasn?t the equipment for slicing meat that we have today. Back in the good old days, it was a lot of arm work and a good cleaver that was used to cut the meats. So needless to say why a butcher block was in order.

Not too many people realize that you can bleach wood although most are aware that you can stain it. It can be frustrating sometimes when you buy a piece of wood for a project and the colors are so naturally uneven that it looks like it has been done on purpose. You can use bleaching techniques on the darker area to lighten it up somewhat so it blends in more with the lighter shade. Another good use for utilizing the properties of bleach is when wood has black spots on it created by water stains and some various other types of stains.