I recently finished my first tabletop. It’s black cherry sanded to180 grit. To finish I used Watco brand Tung oil. I applied a generous coat with a brush, waited 15 minutes, then wiped it with a clean, dry rag. The tabletop looked amazing. However, the can recommended applying a second coat in 24 hours for best results.
To be safe, I waited 48 hours to apply the second coat. For the second coat I let the tung oil sit for 10 minutes before wiping it off again and buffing with a clean, dry rag. Today, 24 hours after the second coat I notice on certain areas of the tabletop there are tiny shiny spots that almost look like water spots (there was definitely no water on the table). I am not sure what caused this or how to fix it. Any ideas? Thanks
Note: the tung oil can says it contains “Stoddard solvent and tung oil”
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From the photo my first impression was that I was looking at glue. There is no obvious grain / pores for the tung oil to have seeped back out of.
The least aggressive approach to removing it would be to put a kink in the back of a single edge razor blade and use it as a scraper. Bend the back of the razor enough to put a curve in the cutting edge. You should be able to slowly remove whatever that is w/o tearing up the surrounding surface.
Stoddard solvent is a petroleum solvent like naptha, mineral spirits etc. It is pretty ubiquitous stuff, used in all sorts of finishes and also dry cleaning etc. Are you sure those spots arent from glue? Glue can be pretty sneaky and I have found it at times after an oil finish when it was not visible prior to finishing.
It is definitely not glue, as the spots are pretty much all over, even areas away from joints where there was definitely no glue. The spots only showed up after the second coat.
Can they be wiped or are they solid ?
After doing some reading online I found there are other people who ran into the same issue. Apparently it's called "bleed out". After wiping the oil, some areas will continue to bleed out oil. I guess some woods are more prone to it than others. One solution is to periodically wipe the wood as it dries so that the bleed out doesn't dry in tiny pools. I ended up buffing the table with synthetic '000' Gray Extra Fine Steel Wool and then reapplying another coat of tung oil and periodically wiping with a rag and this time there are no shiny spots.
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