Using Steel Wool

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about how to use steel wool. Now when we are using steel wool, steel wool comes in various coarseness and fineness. Now you have and they are graded by numbers so you may have a steel wool that is 2 or 3, any numbers like 1, 2, or 3 represent a coarse steel wool and that might be something that you use as far as removing rust from metal, using WD40 or an oil type of finish so if you have some rough machine parts that you want to clean up using a coarse steel wool. Then you get into the steel wools that are finer such as a 0 or a 00 or 000 and those are the type of steel wools that you use for something like this is when you are refinishing furniture or putting finishes on furniture. What the steel wool allows you to do is get a really smooth surface as opposed to using a fine sand paper so we'll use the steel wool so in this case if we have put a coat of varnish or urethane or a shellac on this and we are in between coats then we can use the steel wool. Now it is usually a good idea to have a neoprene or latex glove or a rubber glove that you are using when you are using steel wool because little shavings can come off and can embed in your skin so it is good to have some kind of protection but when we are using steel wool we are going to use it just like we would any sand paper and we are just going to rub it and we're going to go with the grain so it is very important when you are refinishing wood that you always use any type of sand paper or any type of steel wool you are putting very very fine scratches into the surface so you always want that to go with the grain so that it won't show up. So again it works just like using steel wool is just like using sand paper and we can just work back and forth and what it does is it really can give you a very fine surface in between your coats of your urethane, shellac or lacquer or polyurethanes. So I'm Tim Gipson and that's how to use steel wool."