Help needed - I stuffed up at the levery last...

Hi there

I have spent 18 months building a table to match chairs and bureau we bought on a holiday once.

It is qld maple, and I have got some great advice from the forum about colour matching because I wanted to match the colour. And i have done so - remarkably, using F&W Tint, then Shellac... and my final coat was to be old-school varnish (terps based - so it darkened it a bit more and stayed with the original...)

And the table looks pretty great (thanks to Nikko in Alice Spring for band saw use, and lots of help from others.) :U

But at the last I have stuffed up.

The varnish had some bubbles on the top. I thought I might be able to smooth them out (it was 3/4 dry by the time i realised) using so terps. Bad idea. I basically buggered up the finish.

So then I thought I'd sand... another bad idea (maybe not dry enough).

It seems to me that at the very last I am in a big mess.

I reckon I need to get rid of the varnish and try again but... here comes the questions...

1. How can I do that best? Bunnings bloke suggested heat - I did a test peice but ... hmm... not convinced
2. Stripper?
3. Sanding??

The issue is is that I don't want to bugger up the Shellac or the tint...

At the end of the day I could fully sand back and build from the bottom - I know the mixes and have learnt the trick to get to the colour, but i would really prefer not to.

Before I stuff it up even more i would love some advice.

I have cross posted this on the general forum too (I hope that's not bad manners!)

Many thanks for any ideas.

John
Alice Springs

Hi John,
Don't know that I can help but if it was me I'd go back to square one and start again.
Others who may be able to advise would probably like to know what type of varnish you used, brand and any other info is always helpful.
personally I would not use heat so it probably comes back to some type of stripper, no not that sort, and when you use that it will probably take you back to the start anyway.
When you use varnish/poly on new timber you can get bubbles from within the grain, some timbers are worse than others. Once you have applied the first coat and sanded it gets less and less. One rule for applying is that once applied it should not be over brushed but i think you have already found out about this rule. :) Hopefully someone with more experience may have a better answer for you. Good luck,
Cheers, Ian