| Jim Williams |
09-01-2009 01:33 AM |
I have a friend who was proudly showing us his beautiful, just-completed refinish job on a W. and C. Scott stock. As we admired it he noticed some fingerprints and absent-mindedly went to polish them off with the cuff of his jacket. However, he forgot that the jacket had snap-closure cuffs, and they were un-snapped at the time. The "male" portion of the snap got trapped between the heel of his hand and the wood, with the pointy-part down. He made an earnest swipe at the fingerprints and was rewarded with a GOUGE about 1/8" wide and nearly 1/16" deep, and several inches long. The finish was dry, but still fresh and tender, so it was very susceptible. Our eyes bulged when he lifted his hand and there was the dead silence of an ominous impending storm. We were all speechless. Words soon came to the friend, however - all of the four-letter, high-volume kind. The rest of us just sat there stunned, afraid to say anything. The blue-streak of profanity soon became cartoonish, however (think Yosemite Sam), and the challenge for the rest of us became to not laugh out loud. It was devastating and we all felt awful for him, but it was one of those inappropriate moments where laughter was difficult to stifle. The situation was definitely not funny, but his reaction struck all of us the same way. In the end, we all managed to remain silent, and never spoke of it again...
I sure was glad when he repaired it, so there were no reminders left.
Jim
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