"George" george@least wrote in message
...
Regardless what you call it, if you have scratches in the surface, you
won't
get a tight droplet, and particles like those in coffee will hide from a
swift wipe like troops in foxholes.

Now your experiment in using your surface as a hot plate is another
matter.
"Microscopic bubbles" is a red flag. You might be evolving excess
moisture
from beneath, and this will break your finish from the wood..

Hi. Yesterday I put another spill of coffee on the 2000 grit poly surface.
This morning it was dried on. I wiped it off with a little rubbing and it
came clean. However, by getting down close to the wood and looking across
the surface I could see a very fine outline where the coffee stain was. It
looks like maybe it etched the poly around the edge, but otherwise the
finish looked the same inside and outside of the coffee mark. This outline
is impossible to see and hard to feel unless you are really looking for it.
I also put a hot coffee pot on the surface for 5 minutes or so to test the
surface again. I got these very very small marks in the surface which could
only be seen looking across the wood. I don't know how to describe them but
I hit the surface briefly with some more 2000 grit and the coffee outline
and these "bubbles" or marks did disappear. Maybe there is still some
volatiles in the oil poly? It has only been a couple of days since I
applied it.

I would consider coffee overnight or a hot coffee pot to be the most extreme
treatment these counters are likely to see, and probably won't ever get the
hot coffee pot. I was told that poly wasn't really impervious and that
converted varnish was the only real way to get a bulletproof finish. It has
to be sprayed on and I don't want to go that far.

It also seems to me that it isn't so hard to fix a poly surface if the
damage is limited to the upper layers of poly. Why not sand it a little,
add another thin layer of poly, and then sand it to finish?

thanks,
dwhite


"Dan White" wrote in message
...
Poured some hot coffee on both surfaces today and wiped it up after
about
1/2 hour. Both sides came clean although the sanded part looked like it
wasn't going to come clean at first. In no time it did come perfectly
clean. I couldn't find any hint of coffee. I also put a hot pot of
coffee
on the poly for about 5 minutes. It looked fine. I did see what were
almost microscopic marks or bubbles when I removed the pot, but didn't
have
time to see exactly what that was. I'm going to try that again
tomorrow,
but things look good so far.