Varnish worn off my table?

[Wade Lippman]

I made an oak kitchen table about 12 years ago, finishing it with wipe on poly. (at least that is what I probably used; who can remember...) The finish has worn off in a few spots.

Can I

• Just varnish over it
• lightly sand it and varnish over it
• sand the old finish off and revarnish it
• something else

[Prashun Patel]

I prefer to take an aspirin before going in for surgery. This is what I do:

1) Clean the table with mineral spirits. Let it dry, wipe on 2 coats of varnish. If it looks fine, you are finished.

2) If you get improper adhesion you can lightly scuff sand, then again clean with MS, and apply a coat or two. If it looks fine, you're finished.

3) If you see witness lines, then you can decide if you need to sand more aggressively to refinish.

[John TenEyck]

Two aspirin for me. I would clean it really well with mineral spirits or Naptha and let dry. Then clean it again using water with a little dish soap. If there are any bare spots you'll need to let it dry overnight after that. Then I'd lightly sand it all with 325 grit, just enough to dull the finish; you aren't trying to remove what's there. Vacuum it off and then apply two coats of whatever varnish you want. Apply the second coat as soon as you can scuff sand (with 400 or 600 grit) the first one w/o it sticking to your sand paper.

This should give you an essentially new finish unless you have true bare spots and the color of the wood in those areas is different from the areas that still have the finish intact. If that's the case, and you want the color to be uniform after you're done, you will either have to sand or strip off the entire top, or dye the bare spots to match the color of the finished areas. If I were faced with those two options, I'd probably strip it all off, sand to remove any wear that's inevitably occurred over those 12 years, and then apply a completely new finish.

John

[Jim Becker]

Prashun hit it with his advice..."it depends" is the operative thought here and trying his recommendations is worth the effort to see if you can keep things simple or if you need to do a bit more to get what you want.