Finishing pine furniture is not different from finishing other types of furniture. The basic steps are all here: sanding, applying the coats of finish, waiting for the coats to dry, and then applying the varnish and finally polishing the wood smooth. The only difficulty is that pine doesn’t stain as easily as do other types of wood. The pluses far outweigh the minuses with pine wood, however. It’s easy to cut and somewhat inexpensive. Once you have your pine cut into the shape you needed, the shapes are all fitted together, the next step is to finish the wood to give it that distinctive sheen.
The first thing to do is sand it. Pine is easy to sand but easy to damage, so be careful with what kind of sander you use. The softer wood between the growth rings is more easily worn down than the rings themselves. To counter this, use a variable-speed random orbital sander. The random orbital sander will not wear down the softer wood at the expense of the integrity of the whole piece because of its random orbit. Start by setting it to the lowest speed and letting the sander do the work, being careful not to press too hard into the wood. If you are building your furniture piece, do not forget to sand each part individually before assembling it. This will spare you from having to sand tight spaces and corners after the piece is already assembled.
Once that is done, it’s best to finish sanding by hand. Avoid using a belt sander or a sander set to high speed because this will likely scratch the pine. Should you scratch the wood, it’s easy to fix. Wet the area with a hot wash rag and then heat it. This will raise the wood grain and make the scratch easier to repair. Once this is done, sand as usual. The scratch should come right off.
Pine is a combination of soft and hard wood, so staining it can be difficult as mentioned earlier. This is because pine absorbs the stain at different rates, which is likely to cause blotching. The solution is to seal it before staining it, as this prevents the wood from absorbing the stain at different rates. Once this is done, use a gel-based stain as it is not runny and easy to spread around.
Pine wood is the same no matter what kind of furniture it is used in. Pine bedroom furniture, pine living room furniture or pine office furniture are all made of the same wood. The finishing technique for unfinished pine furniture, therefore, is relatively similar across all types of furnishings.
Although German settlers had brought Christmas trees to America in the early 1800s, and records point to the existence of Christmas trees in Colonial German homes as early as 1747, Americans were slow to accept the Christmas tree. Probably due to the Puritans’ fierce invective against all things pagan, it took a British monarch to start the Christmas tree on the road to its incredible popularity today. In 1846, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, her German consort, were sketched standing around a Christmas tree with their children. Victoria was popular amongst her subjects, unlike the previous monarch William IV, and whatever happened at the court immediately became fashionable amongst her subjects, and not just in Britain. In fashion-conscious East Coast U.S. society, whatever was adopted in Britain as vogue became adopted soon after. The Christmas tree had finally arrived in America.
In the late 19th century/early 20th century, Christmas trees were decorated with handmade wooden ornaments. Britons liked their trees to be table-top height, while Americans liked their trees to be floor-to-ceiling monuments. German-Americans continued their earlier tradition of decorating their trees with nuts, marzipan cookies and nuts. Dyed popcorn strung up with berries and nuts made its first appearance soon afterward.
Decorations signify an intention to beautify one’s surroundings. There are all kinds of decorations available for Christmas trees today, made of all sorts of materials. Round balls, wooden Santa carvings, even miniature Christmas trees to hang on Christmas trees! But all these details fail to get at the real heart of the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is a symbol of the goodwill of Christmas, a celebration of “Peace on earth to men of goodwill”. Ultimately the Christmas tree is not about the decorations, or even about the pine tree itself. The tree is about gathering around and celebrating the time of Christmas, a time so sacred that during one Christmas Eve in World War I French, German and English soldiers ceased hostilities to celebrate it together.
With the coming of electricity, it became possible to light Christmas trees for days or even weeks. President Calvin Coolidge introduced the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923. Since they have been introduced Christmas trees have been an indispensable symbol of Christmas all over the world. Let’s keep it that way.
The first written record of a Christmas tree comes from the year 1510, in Riga, Latvia. According to the record, local men of the town decorated a pine tree with fake roses, danced around it for a night, and then set fire to it. The rose was considered to be a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Other records point to the Christmas tree originating in Germany. Christians brought trees into their houses and decorated them with colored paper, roses and apples. Popular legend holds that Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, was the first one to put lighted candles on Christmas trees.
While coming home on a dark winter night close to Christmastime, he stopped in his tracks and marveled at the way stars shone through the branches of a small fir tree just outside his home. He replicated the effect by placing lighted candles in a tree he cut down and brought inside. While this is doubted as to the literal veracity of its truth, most records do point to the Christmas tree phenomenon starting in Germany. In fact, the first Christmas trees were brought to America by German settlers in the 1800s. Not long afterwards, Christmas trees started to change from table-top size to room-sized.
Early Christmas trees used to have fairies instead of angels. Fairies were thought to be good spirits that brought good luck to the household. Horns and bells were hung on the branches of the tree to ward off evil spirits. The sound of the bells was thought to frighten them. In Poland, Christmas trees used to be decorated with angels, peacocks and stars. A longstanding tradition in Sweden is to decorate trees with hand-crafted wooden ornaments as well as straw figures of children and animals. The Ukrainians have a live spider complete with web in their trees for good luck.An old Ukrainian legend states that an old women who had nothing to decorate her tree with woke up and saw that the spider webs on her tree had been turned to silver by the rising sun.
In early Colonial America, the Puritans banned Christmas trees because of their supposed pagan origins. William Bradford, the second governor of the Pilgrims, wrote that he tried his best to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the Christmas observance, severely penalizing any violators. Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of Commonwealth England, preached against Christmas carols because of their “heathen influences”.
