On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:41:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I just had my hardwood floors refinished, and a single, short, curly
hair (about 3/4" long) must have fallen onto the floor prior to the
last coat of poly, and now it is beneath that coat of poly. It sort-
of catches the light when you walk in and out of the room, so it is
quite noticable.

Is there any way to remove the hair (which is just beneath the
surface) without damaging the finish? If not, is there any way to
hide the disturbance to the finish? (Maybe one of those floor
cleaning solutions with poly?)

What kind of poly is in that floor cleaning solution you have in
parens? Not polyurethane? I don't think there is any cleaning
solution that dissolves polyurethane and if there were, it would make
a lot of people angry when all they wanted to do was clean.

I hate to argue with a regular here, but my experience is that
patching polyurethane is not noticeable.

So I might just sand out the hair with medium to fine sand paper,
finishing with as fine as you used on the floor before you finished
it, and then patch with polyurethane.

I had a bad experience when I poly'd the dining room of the apartment
I rented. The instructions i read said to buff with steel wool between
coats, and how long to wait before buffing. I did, and the steel wool
embedded itself all over the floor. I'd returned the sanders and
didn't want to sand again anyhow, so I just put another coat on.
Later I noticed that unlike hardwood floors with other finishes IME,
the poly wore off in the areas of high traffic. I don't remembdr if
I patched those areas or not.

You could test my suggestion by taking a 1x2 foot piece of wood and
polying 2/3rds, sanding down part of it, and then repolying the sanded
part, blending in to the undsanded part. You'd be using the exact
same brand of poly, so it might be a very good test.

You know, you miight try prying one end up with a hat pin, and then
lifteing it all out. You can't pull it out lenthwise or that would
leave an empty tube yhou'd never be able to fill. You'd still have to
sand.

Or you could wait a while and see if you still notice it. Are you
intending to put another coat on soon?

Thanks.