A Coarse Correction

Do you ever start looking for something and find something else, get lost in that thing and never get to the original thing you were looking for? Happened to me recently. I can’t even remember what it was I was searching for in the first place. I became so enthralled when I ran across some silver candle sticks – they threw my whole afternoon off. “Where in the world have these been?” (Right here in this cabinet.) “They would look so great on my table!”

Of course, I could not immediately dash to the other room and plop them on my table in a stylish and delightful manner. They were covered in tarnish. “I could swear there were pretty and shiny when I put them away 2,3,4 years ago.” So now you see what took up my whole afternoon. (While I can be poky, it does not take all day for me to walk from one room to another, usually.)

The thing about polishing silver is it takes a lot of elbow grease, as they say. I don’t know what they make tarnish out of but they should paint the space shuttle with it. It is impervious to almost everything. I rubbed so much I thought a genie was going to come out and grant me three wishes. I almost took to using an S.O.S pad to get the black gunk off.

Of course, that would have been too abrasive and ruined the silver. No a softer yet still abrasive cleaner was needed. A coarse sponge finally began to work nicely. The candlesticks began to shine and gleam as their silversmith originally intended. I don’t do this very often so my learning curve was a little larger than maybe most.

Carpenters understand the concept of using abrasion to make something shiny and beautiful. They run into this problem all the time and have it figured out. They use sandpaper.

In the beginning of a project when the wood is raw and splintery a carpenter chooses rough and coarse grain sandpaper. The large grains of the paper remove large chunks, stains and blemishes of the wood. It also exposes the woods beautiful natural grain that was hidden underneath all that.

Toward the end of the project the carpenter will switch to small, finer grain sandpaper. This finer paper blends out and smoothes and polishes the wood until the wood reveals its true inner beauty. The paper is still just abrasive enough to remove some tiny bits of wood but it leaves the piece largely intact as the carpenter has created it. The finer the sandpaper, the prettier the final product.

Like me trying to remove the tarnish, the carpenter cannot shape his wood and make its natural beauty shine through by using a soft cloth. That would merely clean the tarnished candlesticks or wood in its dirty and unusable form. Only after all tarnish is removed or all the fine grain and natural wood beauty revealed is a velvety soft polishing cloth used to care and protect the creation.

It takes a skilled craftsman to know which grain and coarseness of sandpaper to use during which stage of construction. A true carpenter uses the least coarse paper he can to get the job done lest he damage the wood. That is why some antiques are more beautiful than others – the skill of the carpenter the wood was entrusted to.

I don’t plan on becoming an expert silver polisher or tarnish remover. Once every couple of years is a-okay by me. My arm is still worn out. But I am glad there are other’s who readily enjoy the task.

By the way, Jesus was a carpenter. Do you think he knows about this sandpaper thing?

~