SECRETS OF PAINT AND STAIN CHEMISTRY

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Following is more information on locating, choosing, mixing, and applying both old-fash ioned and the very newest in stains, paints, and strippers.

NATURAL RESINS

There is more to resin than a nice wood finish. It goes back in time—way back.

The slick and lovely clear-honey or milk-and-honey-toned natural plastic, amber is hardened sap from ancient pines. It was once mined in the Balkans and made into varnish, and may still be. These days, much "Baltic Amber" is polished and made into jewelry. Though it is millions of years old, the occasional piece of amber contains actual—not fossilized into stone—plant fragments and insects that became glued in it. Ever see the movie Jurassic Park? Made me wish that amber was all being made into varnish.

Fresh or fossilized aromatic incense resins, most notably copal, have been made into varnish since they were used to paint sarcogaphi in the days of the Pharaohs. Native Americans use the fragrant and slow-rising smoke of copal incense to speak with the Great Spirit. And, two other incense resins, frankincense and myrrh (Balm of Gilead) were brought to the infant Jesus by the three wise men in sandalwood boxes decorated with enamel-varnish made from copal.

THE LEAD TESTER

For more information on dealing with lead in paint, get on the Internet and download The Lead Tester from the EPAs home page at http://www.branch.com/epa/.

STAINS, DYES, PIGMENTS, AND FILLERS

The final step in preparing a wood surface for finishing is often to color it and/or to seal the grain against moisture and create a surface that will best accept finish. Drywall and ceramic basement walls too often need patching, filling, and sealing. For the most part, there is no way to know what is in most products sold for these purposes—whether they are toxic or an environmental hazard, or whether they are compatible with your preferred final finish. One notable new exception is FI:X Wood Patch from Darworth Co. (800-624-7767). It is a water-based wood filler that will sand and stain as well as any. It comes in a wide-mouthed squeeze applicator that reduces waste.

Another way to be sure is to mix your own from natural or elemental ingredients. Woodcrafters have long made fillers from glue and sawdust. White putty can be mixed from white clay and linseed oil, or clay or painters lime and Elmer's latest super-glue—Pro Bond Polyurethane Glue, which will bond most anything: glass ...stainless steel ...forever. It is a 1-part poly glue that contains no volatile solvents.

Color can be conferred with dyes or stains that penetrate the fibers of wood or fabric, or with pigments that contain finely milled particles, which lodge in the pores of the wood and are mixed with binders to keep them there.

Some oil-type (but nonpetroleum) penetrating stains occur in nature. You can get a lovely yellow-brown stain from a light, colorless, aromatic oil produced in the tough, woody husks of the butternut tree: the elongatedoval outer shell of the nuts produced by the walnut relative that's a cony mon semi-weed tree in the East. Butternut-oil dye was used to color the uniforms of the army of the Confederates in the Civil War.

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