Day 3 at the NWFA Principles of Wood Flooring school was devoted to getting the floor surface ready for finishing (see my post about Days 1 and 2). I'm happy to say I didn't let the big machine drag me through a wall, and not just because there are no walls on our practice panels.
Sanding is instructor Wayne Lee's bread and butter. He likes installing, but he loves to sand and finish, he told the class, so he stood in front of a lineup of sanders, edgers, pads and dust containment systems at the beginning of the day to give us a demonstration.
He also wore a pink tool belt. "Power pink," he said.
Not only are the instructors at this school experts in what they do, they tend to be hilarious. Lee puts on a great show.
To give you a taste of the atmosphere at these schools, here are 10 things I've heard Lee say since Day 1.
"I sweat like a bunch of rednecks trying to speedread."
"I listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd while sanding and Celine Dion for finishing. She's real smooth."
While showing us an full-face respirator to wear when coating: "Don't eat a burrito before you go coating. Because you burp, you die."
Talking about using a fire extinguisher: "And when you run out, you run."
"You gotta be smarter than the average bear."
"They've got hands as rough as corn cobs ...Won't be giving momma any backrubs."
While sanding the bevel out of prefinished wood: "You want to get the butt joint so flat Ray Charles couldn't find it."
"I live so far out they got to pipe in the sunlight."
Talking about the danger of keeping the big machine electric cord in a back pocket: "You're going to fart sparks."
"Cleanest part of your job should be between the back of your truck and the front door."
Talking about old guys who replaced sandpaper in drum sanders their whole lives: "They've got hands as rough as corn cobs ...Won't be giving momma any backrubs."
Let me be as clear as possible, while Lee and the instructors can get laughs, they know why the students spent the money and traveled the miles to get here. They take it very seriously when it's time to go to work.
After Lee's sanding and edging presentation, we all took a turn behind a big machine before splitting into our panel groups. Lee gave each person one-on-one attention, complimenting them if they did all right and pointing out any ways to improve.
That sort of attention was intimidating for some at first, but really helped us newbies get introduced to the machine and understand the dance between man and sander a little better.
You see, Lee calls his sander “Ginger Rogers.” I guess that would make him Fred Astaire, but let's move past that. While everyone went through their first big machine pass, Lee was looking for what type of dance they'd do. He had a list of the wrong ones:
Charlie Chaplin: looks like a penguin walking
Frankenstein: the body's too stiff and tall
Ride and Slide: a hip-hop head-bob motion, “what the young kids are doing”
Porch Swing: too much hip movement side-to-side.
The right way is just to walk heel-toe in a straight line real smoothly, and drop and pull up the drum gradually like an airplane taking off and landing. There are a lot of metaphors in wood flooring, I've learned.
We split out into our panel groups and got to cutting the floor flat. We had to get the microbevels out of the prefinished side of our panel, so that meant going at a 45-degree angle. It took some time since no one at our panel had ever sanded a floor before, but the guys all helped each other out, and the floor was flat before long.
Before the day ended, we got stain down on one half of the panel and a clear waterborne coat down on the other.
Brett Miller and Lee, and I'm sure some of the other instructors as well, both had stories about fires starting on the job because of stain or finish rags that hadn't been thrown away properly. You can bet there were a number of red metal rag cans around the school floor.
With a lid on the rags, we all put a lid on the day. Next up is finishing.
