It isn’t for nothing that carpenters scathingly refer to paint as ‘long putty’. Many a botched woodwork job has been rescued by first-class painting.equally,a bad paint job will ruin the finest woodwork.and come the time that you want a project fit for exibition in the ‘I Did It Myself’show-it is infuriating to see it spoiled by a stray bristle,an ugly run,or worse.Yet careful preparation,and the observance of a few rules,can make your next painting project the most successful yet.

Choosing a brush.

A good brush is a good investment-not just in better mileage,but in helping to preserve your good temper.a cheap brush is often stiff,making it difficult to avoid ugly brush marks on the finished job.If the bristles are too thin to pick up a decent load of paint,you may be tempted to dip too deeply into the paint-the result will be a clogged-up brush which you cannot get clean and which will drop flecks of old paint on to the next painting job.And a cheap brush will also shed an infuriating number of bristles –at least a couple of which you will not notice until otherwise immaculate gloss paint coat has dried out.

To be good,a brush does not have to be most expensive one in the shop.But its bristles will at least be plump(to pick up a sufficient paint load),soft to the touch(to avoid brush marks),and long(to apply the paint smoothly).the best brushes are those with natural bristle-hair of hog or boar.This bristle has naturally split ends,which provide a grip to hold the paint and help it and hold the paint and hepl it go on smoothly.Synthetic fibres are smooth and hold paint less efficiently.The bristles on a good brush taper slightly at the end.

General-purpose paint brushes range in width from 13mm(1/2in)up to 102mm(4in).For most indoor gloss paint or varnish work a 50.8mm(2in)brush is easiest to handle,while a 25.4mm(1in)brush is used for detail work,such as drawer handles and narrow edges. New brushes shed hairs,and often contain odd bits of bristle and factory dirt.To keep this rubbish out of your painting the brush should be ‘filtered’,that is,flicked against the hand,and the washed in warm,soapy water and rinsed in clean water.Lay it flat to dry out. Most professional painters break in a new brush by using it for priming or undercoating.This allows them to deal with odd stray bristle where it matters least.They also keep one set of brushes reserved permanently for white or pastel paints,since darker pigments left in the ‘stock’(handle)may bleed into lighter paintwork.

  Materials required.

For painting a whitewood dresser for example, the paint tools required are:

1.Paint kettle. 2.Brushes-50.8mm(1in). 3.Glasspaper-grades 0and 1.4. A cellulose –based filter ,such as Polyfilla.5.Small sponge or duster for surface cleaning. 6.Patent shellac-based knottingfor treating knots. 7.Thinners-for which to buy,see instructions on the paint tin. 8.Pva adhesive ,which you will mix  in a tin solution with the cellulose filler to’raise the nap’. 9.A flexible scraper to apply this mixture.Also ,you need newspaper or dustsheets to protect the floor.

 

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