Thank you! That clarified a lot and explained why yesterday was such a
fiasco. Yes, I meant refinishing.

Thanks again,

Aaron

JGS wrote:
Sounds to me like you are confusing "resurfacing" and "refinishing". If you
are "resurfacing" or just wanting to add another coat of varnish or poly
or,,,, you just need to scuff up the surface with sand paper and then
recoat. Stripper is not used.
If you "refinishing" then you need to remove all the old finish down to
the bare wood and start over at the beginning. When using stripper, it only
works when it is wet. Therefore you have to keeping adding stripper or
covering the area with paper or plastic giving the stripper some time to
work before scrapping it off. You then have to sand the whole surface to
remove any stripper residue. JG

wrote:

Hi,

I read the following in a howto on refinishing furnitu "Again, keep
the surfaces moist while you are working, to avoid drying out the wood"
when talking about using semi-paste and liquid strippers. When they say
"moist", do they mean "moist with the stripper" or just dampening the
surface with a wet rag or something?

Also, I don't quite understand the need to remove *all* of old finish.
If there's a sanding step there anyway, and sanding is bound to take of
a little bit of wood, but not let it take of the 5% of the old finish
with it?

Thanks!

Aaron Fude