Hello everyone. I’ve been quietly reading these forums to get advice on finishing a walnut countertop with Waterlox. The information has been great and I finally got the courage up to do this. Everything was going well until the final (5th) coat. After leaving it for about 6 hours, I took a peek to see how it was doing and it was fantastic! Except for a nice little black fly right in the center, permanently stuck there as the finish is now fairly well set. I’ve heard that waterlox finishes are “repairable”. Does that mean spot repairing or do I need to wait for the finish to cure, sand the whole piece down until the fly remains are gone and put that last coat on again?
TBH I’m pretty sure the answer to that is yes, but I’m hoping against hope (for context, I’m working in a very humid area and it have to wait way more that 24 hours before sanding)
Replies
I'd wait for a full cure and remove the fly with a damp rag before planning for the nuclear option. If the bug is small he may not leave a trace.
If it's a countertop that will get any use at all you may as well adopt a wabi-sabi attitude about the surface finish.
I do a lot of outdoor varnishing and small black flies abound here, unless you applied coating over them, they comme off at the first rub when the finish has dried.
Leave it. Come up with some sort of Jurassic Park story for why it's there.
Keep in mind that you have 4 coats of finish already dried under the fly. If you want it really good, you only need to prepare for a second final coat (6th coat) by using the same process you used to rub it out between coats, tho it may need a bit extra rubbing at the fly. Try to avoid doing markedly different things to the fly area compared to the rest of the top.
"a bit extra rubbing at the fly?"
Almost as good as the title!
Pull that thing out and use a sanding block with some dull 220 or 400 grit until the imprint is gone. Do another coat. Done.
Thanks everyone for all the replies. After two weeks of leaving it alone, I was able to just brush the fly remains out. It's left a small mark but not very noticeable. We'll take the wabi-sabi approach after all and live it with.
Thanks for closing the loop.