Sunday, February 10: Research and Sewing afternoon

To everybody who is not going to Ymir:

I'd like to open my house up for a research and sewing afternoon this Sunday, February 10 from 2-6pm.
I've got a good research collection of German renaissance materials (Landsknecht especially) and some Italian and general Medieval as well.
If you need help with drafting a pattern, learning more about proper fabrics, fitting or just want someplace warm and friendly to work on some handsewing, come on over!

Where: Email me for address and directions but I'm in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia
Note: I do have a toddler, so if you are allergic to children medicate accordingly. :)

Experiment for the day: Testing waterproofness of a cheese glue finish

Lately I've been playing around with a period cheese glue in some woodworking projects. So far it is working great, and I love how nicely it sets up and how strong it is.

I also noticed how it changed the color of the wood, even when I wiped it off. So I asked myself, "Could it be used as a finish?"

Here are two pieces of Poplar wood.
The piece on the left has been coated twice in food grade Flaxseed oil. The oil was heated to 200 degrees F in my microwave, and the first coat was applied while the oil was very hot. I left it to cool for 5 mins, wiped the surface, and applied a second coat. It was left to sit in my coolish garage for 24 hours.

The piece on the right was given a medium coat of cheese glue and left to cure for 24 hours. I then lightly sanded it with a piece of 120 sandpaper.

To conduct this waterproof test, I put a large sized water drop on each piece of wood and left it to sit for one hour. You can see the water drops in this picture, I left the spoon in for size comparison.


After an hour, I wiped the water drops off and let the wood dry for another hour, to see if any permanent mark was left. Here is a picture of the wood, after the water drop test and having a chance to dry. As you can see, there are no permanent marks left on either surface. I expected that the flaxseed oil finish would be waterproof, but had no idea that the cheese glue finish would be.


Any other tests I should run on these two pieces?