The moniker of "the man on the can" came to me in 1999 while I was working with Mary (Woman on the Phone) on a huge finishing job she had undertaken in Burlington, Vermont. Although many people know me as animated and definitely "out there", I am initially a shy person. This job was a high visibility, high powered finishing job with some people dynamics that were challenging. My job was to finish and support Mary with dependable expertise that she didn’t need to micro-manage, so my presence was low key. One day while she and I were "tweaking" color in the Mahogany Library (we had four very different colors of raw Mahogany to "unite"), we had many cans of our stains (a drawing of me is on the stain can label) set out on a work table for blending and shading.

All of a sudden, one of the finishers on Mary’s crew looked up from the can at me and proclaimed in this awe-filled voice, "You’re the man on the can!." The job site became abuzz with the news that "the Frank Welles", the guy that manufactures the oil they are using to finish with, the stuff that’s in the Garrett Wade catalog, is right upstairs! The homeowner was thrilled that the actual founder and president of Sutherland Welles Ltd.® was finishing in their home. The phrase stuck - I became the Man on the Can!

I have been "the man on the can" dedicated to formulating the highest quality Polymerized Tung Oil finishes to fill the can for over thirty years! My lifelong passion with wood as an art form and my commitment to preserving wood and enhancing its innate beauty with Tung Oil has created a line of Polymerized Tung Oil based products for every finishing application with the highest performance in terms of coating integrity and aesthetic quality available on the market today. We know it and many wood finishers, both professional and hobbyists, use our products exclusively. We hope you will enjoy using our products and we are always willing to help you in any way we can to be successful as a finisher. Your success means our success and that commitment to you is possible because of the "Woman on the Phone! " After thirty years of running this company alone, I now have a business partner. I started finishing and formulating Tung Oil finishes as a means to support my goal of becoming a fine artist. The problem is that in growing and maintaining a company there is precious little time left to pursue the ultimate goal - painting. The "Woman on the Phone" runs it all now. My role for the future will be in product research and development with the goal of  bringing new and even better finishing products to our customers. This will be my highest and best contribution to the business and will permit me to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a painter.

So the "Man on the Can" feature of our website and future newsletter will be information about new products, product improvements, finishing tips  and maybe even some visual updates from my studio art gallery. My passion to both pursue my studio art and maintain my involvement in Sutherland Welles Ltd.® can at last be realized!

Send mail to webmaster@tungoilfinish.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: September 26, 2007