"john hamilton" wrote in message
...
I have a dining table top with a repaired veneer finish. It has had three
coats of waterbased Ronseal called 'Diamond hard varnish' put onto to it.
Trouble is, that if water is not wiped off staight away from this varnish
(and say gets trapped under a flower vase of water); it creates a white
ring stain.

I want to put on an *oiled* based coat and phoned ronseal technical help
line to see if it was ok to paint their oil based 'ultra tough varnish' on
top of the water based diamond hard varnish. They said it was ok to do so.

I forgot to ask them if the oil based ultra tough is a *polyurathane*
varnish or not, and their office is now closed for the weekend. (i want to
do it this weekend). I cannot find whether it is or not a polyurathane
varnish from their website.

Is this ultra tough varnish likely to be more *scratch resistant* than the
diamond hard varnish already on the table or not, would you say?

Also it comes in three finishes; gloss, satin and matt. I would prefer to
use the matt, but have been told by someone that usually gloss is more
hardwearing than matt paints. Do you think that it would make much
difference between gloss and matt with this ultra tough varnish? Thanks
for any advice.


Generally I would not use water-based varnish if there was a choice:
especially in an environment where water is likely to be spilt.
Also, a table top is one place where I would break my usual rule of 'diamond
hard is best' (other types tending to be rather tacky and difficult to
sand).
The surface of your table *is* going to get scratched, and the harder the
finish the worse it will look.

I think that, before trying any drastic varnish treatments, I would try it
with linseed/Danish/teak oils, or French polish. At least when these get
marked you can just wipe over with white spirit or meths and fine steel
wool, before repolishing, and can also add extra wipes of polish/oil
whenever you like. Varnish itself is easy enough to put on but sometimes
leaves you wishing you hadn't.

S