Hi all. First post, and first finishing project: walnut cabinet with nice dark boards but had to match the color of the gray kiln dried walnut plywood for the panels.

Finishing schedule for the walnut plywood: transtint diluted with water, blo wiped clean after soaked in, followed by Arm R All. Spent a lot of time on this site for how to apply the Arm R All and tried to piece together the many helpful posts. Did three coats, wiped on like the busboy, each coat applied after dry to the touch. Then waited 24 hours.

The final coat was clear and no streaks or blotches, but remained tacky for several days. Used mineral spirits to try and get rid of the uncured Arm R Seal, which made it waxy instead of tacky. Still, after a week, it was waxy.

I think the source of the problem was doing this in the garage while we were having flooding in Houston and 100% humidity.

I tried wet sanding with 600 grit and mineral spirits on one extra piece and burned right through the transtint in a couple of places, and with the BLO was hard to put down more transtint to match those spots. Tried putting a fresh coat on another piece, and remained waxy after 24 hours. Tried another fresh test piece yesterday to see if it was bad Arm R Seal, but this morning it was hard, dry and smooth.

This morning, tried gel stripper on the other pieces, followed by the stripper wash, and ended up with what looked like witness lines, i.e., some came off but most didn't. Couldn't tell if that was the BLO layer or the Arm R Seal layer.

Trying to figure out if there is a particular stripper that would work with Arm R Seal, and also whether there is some kind of abrasive (steel wool?) that I can use with either mineral spirits or some kind of stripper wash that won't burn through the transtint. I don't want to sand down to bare wood everywhere because the veener is already pretty thin.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.