Who Can You Trust?

I receive emails all the time asking for refinishing help or advise. I noticed a trend a little while back was starting to develop that I had never really noticed in past years. I started receiving a lot of and #34;panic emails and #34;.
People started a project, ran into a serious problem (or so they perceive), and then kick into panic mode and search the web for help. When seeking out help on the net, have you ever asked yourself this fundamental question? What if the advise I just received was wrong?

I recall getting into this business back in the early eighties. There was no internet, and everything was learned the hard way. I literally have blocked many of those frightening memories of the past from my mind. Thank god we have the web now, so people don and #39;t have to suffer such hardships ;-) But with this awesome tool comes responsibility. We users need to realize that anyone can post information without a resume and without consequence.

Kevin emailed me several times and called the office in total panic mode. He had applied stripper to a piece of furniture and thought that he may have ruined it.....the good news was, he didn and #39;t and #33;

Then there was Pam. Pam sent pictures of her buffet that had been in the family for many years. It meant a lot to her, so she decided to refinish it. Pam was fearless, and dove into her new found furniture refinishing hobby with zest. She began to sand the finish off with an orbital sander. Now.....I would have advised against this because it only works on select furniture and definitely not ever on veneered pieces. When Pam emailed me, She was concerned that she had over sanded and may have ruined her beloved buffet. I about fell out of my chair when I saw the picture....Pam used an electric orbital disc sander, but only sanded one spot. It was veneer and she sanded all the Finish AND veneer off in a perfect little circle the size of the sanding disc. Pam was not as lucky as Kevin, she did ruin her buffet and was pretty devastated. My only advise for her at that point was to paint it.

I started to wonder why I was receiving these emails so often? One thing Kevin and Pam had in common was they both searched for their and #34;how to and #34; advise on the web. My curiosity kicked in and I began a search. I had never really thought about this before, but as I looked around I was pretty appalled at some of the horrifically inaccurate info I was coming across. It became obvious in a pretty short time how unsuspecting people like Pan and Kevin were so easily misguided.

It frustrates me to see this, because It shouldn and #39;t happen. Unfortunately, there are no internet police and the lack of consequence has made a lot of folks with a keyboard and some spare time overnight experts in a field that even I am not sure I and #39;m even an expert in.....and I do it everyday, and have done so going on 30 years now. The internet is still a baby, and right now we are all so happy just to have and #34;answers and #34; at our fingertips that I think we forget to question the accuracy and the source.

Obviously...you somehow landed here, so that is a good thing and #33; This topic after all, is the reason we started the Refinishing Studio Learning Center ( in the first place. Just be sure when taking any advise on the internet that the person giving the advise is credible and has a strong background in the field. Especially when working on furniture...where one false move may be the doom of your family heirloom.