floor sanding - patchy finish after waxing - help needed

[michael1978]

Hello all,

I've made a bit of a mess sanding a victorian pine floor and would very much appreciate some advice on how best to correct it.

We starting off by sanding the floor using a hired belt/edge sander from the local hire shop, which came out okay. We then filled the gaps between boards with a resin based mix and fill mixed with the sawdust.

Now here's where we went wrong... we ran out of mix and fill before finishing the whole job, and had to wait a few days before we could get some more. In the meantime, the sander was returned to the shop and had to hand sand off the excess with an orbital. The mix and fill was a lot harder to remove than we anticipated, so we ended up using 40 grit sandpaper to shift it. We then gave it a quick once over with 80 then 120 (both with orbital) before finishing with 2 coats of osmo hardwax oil (satin).

Now as you can probably imagine, the finish is very patchy and has a nice sheen to the finely sanded areas whilst being very dull where the coarse paper was used.

And now onto my question: what can i do to achieve a decent, even finish across the floor? A person at osmo suggested applying another coat of hardwax oil with a polishing machine - but is this likely to polish out rough areas? And I'm thinking that if i'm going to trouble of hiring equipment again then I might be better off hiring a sander and re-doing the whole floor. Or could i get away with re-sanding with a hand belt/rotary/orbital sander?

Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Mike

 

[WoodYouLike]

Although it is never a good idea to use too many different sanding machines and to let the woodfiller dry too long there's at the moment no need to despair.

Before you re-sand or re apply another coat of HardWaxOil try applying a hard wax or wax-polish (both are maintenance products and in your case the hard wax would be better). Best is to hire a heavy enough floor-buffer (or buy one of our 'old-fashion' and eco-friendly cast-iron buffing blocks) to buff the wax in the floor.
This action might do the trick - or partly and then you can re-apply the wax again after two or three days. This is always better than to apply another coat of hardwaxoil where the oil will have trouble penetrating through the wax component of the two layers you already applied.

 

[michael1978]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Regarding buffing it with hardwax, is it likely to provide an even sheen across the whole floor (even the rough bits), or will it still look a bit patchy? Obviously this sounds better than resanding the whole floor, but am worried that even after buffing it still won't look great and then i'd have to resand anyway. So am thinking that it might be better to just hire a re-finishing sander now and get a decent finish before re-applying the hardwax oil? They seem to both involve roughly the same amount of time and expense so it seems to come down to what would provide the best finish - could you advise please?

Also, forgot to mention in 1st post - there are a few circular sanding marks in floor that have shown up after the finishing - I assume I would be okay locally sanding these out before buffing the floor?

Thanks again,

Mike

 

[WoodYouLike]

With resanding you will have to deep-sand again to remove the already applied hardwaxoil. Normally it takes between 10 - 14 days before the applied hardwaxoil fully cures, so perhaps with a waxing/buffing trial and patience the result will improve so much you don't need to resand.

 

[michael1978]

Thanks again for the quick reply.

Thought i might be able to get away with a light sand and then another coat of hardwax oil but if this is not the case then will go down the wax/buffing route. Would the osmo Wood Wax Finish (Transparent) product be suitable for this? If not could you recommend something else? And what is the best thing to use for buffing the wax for a test area before hiring the machine?

Also, as mentioned last time, can you think of any problems with if i were to locally sand out areas marked by the edging sander before doing the waxing.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[WoodYouLike]

Also, as mentioned last time, can you think of any problems with if i were to locally sand out areas marked by the edging sander before doing the waxing.

Locally sanding away marked areas will 9 times out of ten create local areas with marks I'm afraid because you will be using a different sanding tool once again. Or you have to expand the local area to such a space any new difference won't matter.

Buffing a small area: non-fluffy cloth and lots of elbow grease if you don't have a heavy buffing block

 

[michael1978]

And is the the osmo Wood Wax Finish a suitable wax to use?

Thanks.

 

[WoodYouLike]

No, that's really an oil, not a wax. It will not penetrate into your wood when hardwaxoil is already applied

 

[DeludedAussie]

No, that's really an oil, not a wax. It will not penetrate into your wood when hardwaxoil is already applied

Can anyone tell me what would you like means please when he says a maintenance product like hard wax?? Are we talking about briwax clear?