Full disclosure: I am not handy at all.
Having said that…. Jackie bought this stool perhaps a decade ago, to use for sitting at her spinning wheel. Turned out, she really liked it, and has used it for all manner of sitting since then—any textile arts activity (weaving, etc.), but also just sitting at the dining table.
She shellacked it herself, having decided on shellac because it is so non-toxic, compared to pretty much any other wood finish.
Over the past ten years or so, the shellac wore along the front edge of the stool, and it got scuffed up in various places. She’s been complaining about this for a while now, and I bought a fresh can of shellac and some sandpaper, so she could fix it. Just lately she’s been complaining that the front edge was getting kind of splintery, where the wood had worn, after the shellac wore away.
It took a while, but I eventually understood that she was hoping that I would and go ahead and refinish her stool for her. (I’d thought that, since she’d done it herself in the first place, she’d have a proprietary interest in doing it again herself. Turns out, no.)
Today she complained again about how the splinters were catching not only on her clothes, but also on her skin. So I said, “Right! I’ll fix it!”
It took a while to track down the sandpaper, but once I had that, the smoothing off of the splintery bits went very quickly. Then I opened the can of shellac and brushed it on.
The directions say to wait an hour, sand it again, and then give it another coat. I’m sure that would be a great idea, but I’m not at all sure that I’ll do so. It’s actually looking pretty good with just one more coat over the coat Jackie gave it 10 years ago.
So now I am feeling very handy. Handy enough to feel somewhat manly as well.
