One of the many fantastic tips I learned from “The Belligerent Finisher” was using common household materials to burnish wooden surfaces. Burnishing compacts the wood and can add a gorgeous texture.
Author John Porritt has several simple tools he uses for this. The coolest one is a chainmail pot scrubber, which is great fun to use. You can find these at any good household/kitchen store. I experimented with several different kinds. Some had bigger rings. Some had very fine rings. I preferred the smallest rings. The fine one I like looks like the one shown here. I bought mine at a local restaurant supply store. Look around, and I’m sure you’ll find one.
I’ve been using the pot scrubber on my chairs before applying soft wax. I use it mostly on protruding tenons and on the chair’s hands. The burnishing rounds over any hard edges, making them kind to the user’s hands.
The pot scrubber is quite similar to using a polissoir, except that it excels at working on curved and shaped surfaces. The polissoir, on the other hand, is great for large flat surfaces and is tricky to use on edges.
As always, the world of finishing is endlessly surprising.
— Christopher Schwarz
To read previous entries in the gift guide, click here.
What a great idea! Thanks for sharing this…
Cool!
They’re also remarkably good at scrubbing pots and pans, especially cast iron ones where soap is the enemy.
Someone at Milk Street is wondering why they sold out their entire stock of chain mail pot scrubbers today!
I’m going to get one. But it’s nice that it’s for Milk Street. Christopher Kimball writes a cooking story every week for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Just make sure to get one with welded rings.
The best feature is you don’t have to hear yourself saying “polissior”