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Hi all- Some background; my dad is a retired theatre artisan and woodworker with very low vision. He is legally blind and has no central vision. He is part of a national group of professional woodworkers who have anywhere from pretty bad vision to complete vision loss. There are a lot of great tools out there that allow blind woodworkers to do what they love. His group is meeting for a conference this June and one of the topics is stain and finish. This is something he says they all struggle with.
He makes a lot of things for me like end tables and recipe boxes. I’ve noticed that on really tight grain wood there are small holidays. On larger objects with broader or contrasting grain I haven’t seen noticeable flaws.
How would you teach a blind person to stain or seal a wood project? Any special material or tool you would use? He said he often works in quadrants which seems like a good start. I wonder if using a woolly hand pad would help monitor application pressure? Maybe furniture wax as a final coat would hide minor holidays? I bet there are a lot of good ideas out there. Looking forward to hearing them!
Tina
[img][attachment=0]2ADCC4C3-A312-4734-BCF9-6E98CCE24348.jpeg[/attachment] [/img] Any suggestions out there? 🙂 Tina
tinayager wrote:
Hi all-Some background; my dad is a retired theatre artisan and woodworker with very low vision. He is legally blind and has no central vision. He is part of a national group of professional woodworkers who have anywhere from pretty bad vision to complete vision loss. There are a lot of great tools out there that allow blind woodworkers to do what they love. His group is meeting for a conference this June and one of the topics is stain and finish. This is something he says they all struggle with.
He makes a lot of things for me like end tables and recipe boxes. I’ve noticed that on really tight grain wood there are small holidays. On larger objects with broader or contrasting grain I haven’t seen noticeable flaws.
How would you teach a blind person to stain or seal a wood project? Any special material or tool you would use? He said he often works in quadrants which seems like a good start. I wonder if using a woolly hand pad would help monitor application pressure? Maybe furniture wax as a final coat would hide minor holidays? I bet there are a lot of good ideas out there. Looking forward to hearing them!
Tina
[img]2ADCC4C3-A312-4734-BCF9-6E98CCE24348.jpeg[/img]
I spoke with my husband who does a lot of woodworking and he had some thoughts on staining to share: Use a small piece of t-shirt rag (maybe 6″ square) dip it into the stain and fully saturate it. Ring the rag out so it is not dripping but still quite damp and then, using a large portion of your hand, start doing small circles over the entire surface then use broad figure 8 movements to be sure you have spread the stain around evenly. Using a rag will give the person the ability to feel crevices and areas that need more attention. You can either immediately wipe off excess stain with a dry rag or let it sit for a set amount of time and wipe it off with a dry rag.
He also liked the furniture wax idea you mentioned to cover small imperfections. Not sure if this is helpful or not. This is a really interesting subject and would love to hear how the conference goes!
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