Inching Along

This is another of those boring just-for-the-record posts.

I didn't get called in to teach this morning, so I took advantage of the time to clean up and restore the bullnoses on the treads of the stairway to the 3rd floor.  Primarily used the mouse sander as my sculpting tool, at first with 60-grit sandpaper.  But then I ran out of precut sheets and I was too lazy to go downstairs and cut more.  So I used the 80-grit and it did just as well, maybe better.

Once I got the worst of the dirt and irregularities off with the electric sander, I went over the nosings again with a 40-grit 3M sanding sponge, one of those parallelogram-shaped affairs that lets you get into tight corners.  I discovered to my great relief that sanding down the surfaces removed a lot of the bad irregularities at the nosings.  It'd looked before like I was going to have to do a lot of fiddly filling, especially on the bottommost tread.  But no, the splintery bits are pretty much all gone.

Filling the remaining holes and dings with Zar wood filler would be the next thing, now that I've gone over the sanded surfaces with dena-tured alcohol.  But there was that hammer dent I'd been meaning to steam out for ages and never did till today.  Yeah, the technique with the wet washcloth and the travel iron (less chance of burning bare wood) raised it right up just as reported.  In fact, it's now higher than the wood around it, like a big black mole, since it's now as high as the original surface.  That's fine, it'll get sanded down. 

But not till tomorrow or whenever, since all that water has to dry.

I suppose I could fill every other tread today except that one.  Maybe when I'm sure the alcohol is dry.