Hi all,
My first post here. I have recently (March) started turning wood and am loving it. I've had good success and have really enjoyed every aspect of learning this new hobby including the finishing. I have just recently had my first experience where I am totally stuck. Here's the situation:
I turned a nice red leaf maple bowl, sanded through the grits to 600 (using Vince's abrasive discs and a close quarters drill). Then I used EEEUltrashine, which has given me very good results in the past. My intent was to use a friction polish after the Ultrashine.
Unfortunately, this was the stage that I noticed some sanding lines under the rim of the bowl. No problem, I thought, I just went back and re-sanded, this time by hand, starting at 100 up to 220 grit. Bowl looked nice and smooth.
At this point, I decided that I would just use a waterbase poly because I liked the light color of the wood. I have had good luck with this as well. So I went to the first step of this process which is to spritz some water on the bowl to raise the grain and dewhisker it after the water had dried. Unfortunately, when I sprayed the water on, I immediately noticed these bluish/blackish streaks. Looking closely at them, they are actually little black dots. The weird thing is that the inside of the bowl and the bottom of the bowl are just fine. But the outside of the bowl is covered with them. It's most prominent on end grain areas but is not limited to these. If I let it dry, the spots go away (mostly). But as soon as I put any solvent on the bowl, whether it's water, naptha, mineral spirits, the spots come back. So I don't know what to do about finishing it. And I'm stumped as to what's causing it.
Any thoughts and advice would be most welcome.
Thanks very much
--dan