Removing mineral oil from wood

[Zac wingert]

I just about finished a serving tray and the workpiece sustained some pretty good scratches and gouges. It needs to be addressed, sanding is probably enough, but I’d like to remove as much oil as possible before gunking up all my sand paper. What solvent? I will merely be re applying mineral oil after re sanding. Thanks

[Jessica de Boer]

Acetone. Take a clean cloth, soak it with acetone and leave it on the tray for a few minutes so it has time to dissolve the oil. Then soak the cloth with acetone again and give it a good rub down. Make sure to ventilate well.

[Prashun Patel]

mineral spirits or naphtha will also work.

[Brice Rogers]

Another approach would be to "wet" sand it with mineral oil. Yes, that one little piece of sandpaper will get saturated with oil. But it should sand just fine and no airborne dust. I wet sand with shellac, walnut oil, etc.

[John K Jordan]

Another approach would be to "wet" sand it with mineral oil. Yes, that one little piece of sandpaper will get saturated with oil. But it should sand just fine and no airborne dust. I wet sand with shellac, walnut oil, etc.

I too wet sand with whatever finish I'm using (usually "danish" oil) to remove minor scratches. I use hand scrapers if the scratches are significant.

(Have you ever tried wet sanding with thin CA glue? I learned that trick from John Lucas, good occasionally to fill in voids. You do have to be careful how you hold the sandpaper.)

JKJ