Y'know what they say? "If at first you don't succeed, become completely obsessive and let it dominate and ruin your life until you do."
I just couldn't let that damned table go. I figure the first try was on the clock and now it's all mine.
I spent half of yesterday scraping off as much of the finish as I could with a carbide scraper. I'm not used to removing fresh finishes, just old ones, and the rate at which it clogged RO disks was unsupportable. Got a hell of a workout with the ol' scraper and filled the big shop vac twice with sticky shavings. I was quite surprised to find much of the stain still so uncured it left stains on my hands.
Finishing up with 40 grit Diablo from the local hardware store--no Cubitron on the shelves here:
I was able to remove 90+% of the finish with the scraper, but the remaining <10% still clogged the disks
fast. Some of the planks of the top were really stubborn. I went through 5 disks to get to that point.
A clean slate:
That's after 80-150-220 Cubitron II on the RO sander. It's really incredible how much faster the Cubi cuts compared to the conventional disks--but, of course, the conventional did the heavy hauling. I need to order more 80 and some 40 in Cubi.
Now to start laying on lots of
thin coats, starting with the stain. I can probably get the stain and first coat on this afternoon and maybe a scuff sand before I move the table into the warehouse, where I can spend the rest of the week working on it. I just needed to get the heavy sanding done outside, as we store empty cans in the warehouse. Any sanding from here on out will be wet sanding by hand.
It'll be the best polished turd in the house when I'm done....