One of the issues I run into when refinishing the doors comes after the first complete sanding. I’ve generally got it down to bare wood now. But these doors are approaching 80 years old. So they have a bunch of dents and divots and gouges, which have over the years been filled in with paint and putty and such.
I had been going back and spot applying some more stripper. It lets me remove all those little bits just fine. But I risk the stripper soaking into the wood and not allowing the stain to work properly. So I can get improperly colored spots.
On the latest door (#4), I found that I could manually scrap out most of those spots, just using the sharp end of a painter’s tool. I only had one serious, intricate gouge, that’s going to require chemical stripping.
